Venezuela Aotearoa Solidarity Team

John Pilger- Keeping the Record Straight on Venezuela

2007-12-17T23:46:00.000-08:00

Keeping the Record Straight on Venezuela

December 9th 2007, by John Pilger - Comment is free

The book of which I am most proud is Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs. It was a long-held ambition of mine to bring together the work of those I considered the greatest journalists of my lifetime: the "honourable exceptions" of my craft. In paying tribute to them, I wanted to demonstrate to young journalists a calibre of truth-telling to which they might aspire. There is the reporting of Martha Gellhorn, Edward R Murrow, James Cameron, Seymour Hersh, Paul Foot, Robert Fisk, Jessica Mitford and the Guardian's Seumas Milne and Richard Norton-Taylor among others.

In celebrating those who kept and continue to keep the record straight - the basis of all good journalism - I also recognise the need to identify the example of those at the other end of the spectrum, whose work is hardly journalism at all, but who possess the power of exposure in the so-called mainstream media.

On March 28 2006 I described here a report broadcast on Channel 4 News the previous night by its Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman. Rugman is pretty typical of television's Washington correspondents; he reports as if embedded, when, in fact, his work is voluntary. What distinguishes him is his reporting from Venezuela. Rugman's brief visit last year to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, produced what I described here as "one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen qualifying as crude propaganda". This was a piece, I wrote, "which might as well have been written by the US state department". For example, he described Maria Corina Machado as a "human rights activist". In fact, she was a leader of Sumate, an extreme rightwing organisation, who had been welcomed to the White House by George Bush himself. He caricatured Hugo Chávez as a buffoon dictator. In fact, he is an authentic product of a popular political movement that began in 1989 who has won more democratic elections than any leader on earth. Rugman reported that Chávez was helping Iran develop a nuclear weapon. In fact, this is laughable - see the US National Intelligence Estimate report published on December 3 2007. At the end of his performance, Rugman complained dramatically to the camera that he had been "held for 30 hours" by police in Caracas. In fact, he had walked into a military base and, surprise, surprise, was apprehended - as he would be on any Ministry of Defence establishment in Britain - and Venezuela is a country whose president two years earlier had been temporarily overthrown in a military coup. In fact, Chávez himself arranged for Rugman's speedy release. Rugman's "report" was so absurd that Channel 4 News, which maintains a reputation, was inundated with complaints and, as I was told, "embarrassed" - though not embarrassed enough to desist from sending Rugman back to Venezuela for yesterday's important constitutional referendum.

Chávez narrowly lost the referendum. His government wanted to change a number of articles in the Venezuelan constitution that would define what he has called "socialism for the 21st century", including allowing the president to stand in unlimited elections (which leaders in Britain, Canada, Australia and many other countries can do). But many of his own supporters were unconvinced and probably confused as to why they were being called upon to vote yet again, and 3 million of them abstained.

Ironically, the result actually reaffirmed the health of democracy in Venezuela and served to ridicule the incessant media propaganda that Chávez was a "dictator" and a "tyrant". In a gracious speech conceding defeat, Chávez congratulated the opposition and invited them to celebrate. His tone was the antithesis of the media-led campaign. On the eve of the referendum, closeted with Venezuela's rich minority, Jonathan Rugman allowed them to call Chávez a communist, which he isn't. "It's as bad that?" he contributed.

Presenting these people as victims, he said nothing about their history of rapacious privilege or that their wealth was actually increasing under Chávez. He allowed, unsubstantiated, histrionics such as, "There are Chávez supporters [who] will kill me." His clever cameraperson filmed soldiers from the boots up at polling stations - soldiers who, according to Rugman, instead of saluting cry out "for the fatherland and socialism". That they were guarding an election process internationally recognised and commended was not mentioned, neither was the fact that opposition monitors had announced they were pleased with the conduct of the election. For a spot of "balance", he toured what he called the "slums" and found "rubbish in the streets" and milk missing from otherwise abundantly stocked supermarkets. His script was crudely juxtaposed with images showing a screaming child being given an injection over which Rugman commented that "this is how Chávez is injecting his vast oil wealth just where it's needed most". "Chávez loyalists," said Rugman, "will control parliament." Imagine Channel 4 News describing Labour's electoral majority in the Commons as "Labour's loyalists control parliament."

He diminished or ignored the majority of the proposed constitutional changes including those that would reduce the working week from 44 hours to 36 hours; extend social security benefits to 5 million Venezuelans who work in the "informal economy" - street vendors and the like; end discrimination on the basis of gender - unprecedented in Latin America; lower the minimum voting age from 18 to 16, also unprecedented; and recognise Venezuela's African-Venezuelan heritage and multiculturalism as a step towards ending the rampant racism practised by a wealthy elite reminiscent of white South Africa under apartheid.

With the referendum results announced, Rugman rejoiced with a crowd of the well-off in Caracas. He declared that "the air is seeping out of the socialist revolution". Disgracefully, he reported that "[the opposition] feared that [Chávez] would rig the ballots against them" - when the opposite was both true and confirmed.

Propaganda such as this is an accurate reflection of the Venezuela media, which is overwhelmingly anti-Chávez and pro-Washington and was complicit in the lawless 2002 coup. As one of the coup plotters said, "Our secret weapon was the media." Dressed as journalism, it seeks not to inform, but to discredit - in this case, demonstrably one of the most original and imaginative and hopeful democratic experiments in the world. In doing so, it blocks real debate on issues such as those that led Chávez supporters to abstain and a definition of Venezuela's proclaimed "socialism" as well as the natural tension between the state and the grass roots. It is the same propaganda that has closed down debate elsewhere and helped to see off Allende in Chile, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and Astride in Haiti, not to mention a long list of those on other continents who have tried to raise their people out of poverty and despair. This is journalism as the agency of power, not people, unrelated in all ways to the craft of a Gellhorn, a Cameron, a Murrow, a Hersh.

After the Referendum- views from activists

2007-12-14T11:53:00.000-08:00

There follows a list of quotes translated from the original Spanish from Venezuelan politicians and activists discussing the recent referendum.- Hat tip, Lenin's Tomb.

In 2006, President Chávez won the presidential elections with 62 per cent of the vote, obtaining the support of 7,309,000 people. A year later, the president’s Constitutional Reform only received 4,380,000 votes in favour, which allows the simple observation that some 3 million people who voted for President Chávez in 2006 decided not to vote for his Constitutional Reform proposal.

In contrast, in 2006, Chávez’s closest competitor, the opposition candidate Manuel Rosales, obtained 4,292,000 votes. In 2007, those who were opposed to the reform numbered 4,504,000 - two hundred thousand more people than had voted for the opposition in 2006.

En 2006, el Presidente Chávez ganó las elecciones presidenciales con un 62 por ciento de los votos, obteniendo el apoyo de 7.309.000 personas. Un año después, la Reforma Constitucional del Presidente Chávez sólo logró 4.380.000 votos a favor, lo que a simple vista denota que unas 3 millones de personas que habían votado por el Presidente Chávez en 2006 decidieron no votar por su propuesta de Reforma Constitucional.

En contraste, en 2006 el más cercano competidor de Chávez, el opositor Manuel Rosales, obtuvo 4.292.000 votos. En 2007, quienes se opusieron a su propuesta de Reforma fueron 4.504.000 personas, doscientas mil personas más que quienes votaron por la oposición en 2006.

What is to be done? To leave this situation and ensure that the revolutionary process overcomes this moment and can deepen, it is essential that all power should pass to the people and their organisations.

The Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) congress should become a more democratic organisation where all could think, propose, criticise and decide the best course for the Bolivarian revolution, without the restrictions or bureaucratic interference that prevents free discussion.

We have immense confidence that hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans will continue advancing the socialist project, and will confront on this road any attacks the right may try to make. But this confidence must be accompanied by unity and organisation, and the construction of a space to debate all these themes.

¿Qué se va hacer? Para salir de esta situación y que el proceso revolucionario supere este momento y pueda profundizarse, verdaderamente todo el poder debe pasar al pueblo y a sus organizaciones.

El Congreso del Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) debe transformarse en la más democrática instancia donde todos podamos opinar, proponer, criticar y decidir lo mejor para la revolución bolivariana, sin restricciones y sin injerencias burocráticas que impidan una libre discusión.

Tenemos inmensa confianza en que cientos de miles de compatriotas podemos seguir con el proyecto socialista y enfrentar en ese camino cualquier intento que la derecha pretenda realizar. Pero a la confianza hay que acompañarla de unidad y de organización, construyendo un espacio común para debatir todos estos temas.

Stalin Pérez, Vilma Vivas, Marco García e Ismael Hernández, Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) sindicalistas, Caracas

For so long the President has been favouring people with scarce resources and proposing actions to continue helping the poorest such as through the Consejos Comunales, and I believe that the abstention was a result of complacency, a lack of political maturity, and ingratitude, but the real problem is the situation of criminality and gangsterism in the barrios.

(The campaign) failed to organize regular political debates to explain and compare the advantages and disadvantages between socialism and capitalism. Some just wanted to take from the revolution, and for these, it doesn’t matter whether they vote or not. As such, those who abstained have to accept their irresponsibility.

A estas alturas del tiempo que lleva el Presidente favoreciendo a la gente de menores recursos y proponiendo acciones para seguir ayudandolos como es el caso de los Consejos Comunales, creo que la abstención obedece a la comodidad, falta de madurez política e ingratitud de la gente, pero un problema real es la situación en los barrios con visos de criminalidad y pandillerismo.

Falta realizar, como rutina, talleres de ideología que explique y confronte ventajas y desventajas entre socialismo y capitalismo. Algunos sólo quieren vivir de la revolución y por ello les da lo mismo votar o no. Así que los abstencionistas asuman su irresponsabilidad.

Dalia Pérez, Barquisimeto

I hope the President counter attacks… it seems to me that the politicians were overconfident in the campaign, but now we should advance on the attack.

Aspiro que el presidente haga lo que más el contraataque… ahí se crece… me parece que en la campaña hubo exceso de confianza de parte del políticos, pero ahora debemos avanzar al ataque.

José Rojas, Barrio El Junquito, Caracas

We have to find out what happened with this Chavismo Lite that stayed at home, we have to see what is going on with the people.

Furthermore, we have to make sure that its not just politicians in the media influencing this mystical public opinion, but that all Venezuelans are involved in politics.

We have to organize ourselves, go into the streets, construct this community, these consejos… we have to respect our President and bring the confused abstainers to the polls.

The fight continues comrades - this hasn’t finished, and he who doesn’t believe that doesn’t deserve to be called a revolutionary.

Tenemos que ver que pasa con ese Chavismo Light que se quedo en su casa, tenemos que ver que esta pasando en el pueblo.

Además tenemos que demostrar que no es político solo el que habla en medios y crea esa mitificada opinión publica, sino todos y todas las venezolanas y venezolanos, todos tenemos que estar inmiscuidos en problemas políticos.

Tenemos que organizarnos, salir a las calles, construir esa comunidad, esos consejos… tenemos que velar por nuestro presidente y llevar a las urnas a esos abstinentes confundidos.

La lucha sigue camaradas - esto no ha terminado, y el que lo crea así, no merece ser llamado revolucionario.

Pablo Trinidad, Cua, Venezuela

This is a clear message that the Venezuelan opposition has nothing assured, that it wasn’t a convincing victory, and much less an end to the hope of a new, more just, economic and political future.

Nothing has been lost, we will continue and we will advance.

Este es un claro mensaje a la oposición venezolana, que indica que no tienen nada asegurado, que no fue una victoria contundente y mucho menos un final a la esperanza de un nuevo furturo económico y político más justo.

Nada se ha perdido, continuemos, avancemos.

Ángela, Barrio 23 de enero, Caracas

I think that one of the reasons (for the defeat) was the scattered efforts to organize the PSUV on one side, and on the other, the discussion about the reform.

Of six million members, only one million and a bit attend meetings… the PSUV has not been organized, and this confrontation especially found it poorly prepared.

I believe in the PSUV, I believe it is necessary, but also I think it was a mistake to leave the organisation of the party until after the referendum.

Creo que una de las razones fue la dispersion de esfuerzos por un lado con la corformacion del PSUV y por el otro la discusion de la reforma.

De seis millones de inscritos solo asistian a las reuniones un millon y piquito… el PSUV no estaba organizado, y especialmente para esta confrontacion no se encontraba debidamente preparado.

Creo en el PSUV, creo que es necesario, pero tambien creo que ha podido posponerse su conformacion hasta pasar el referendum.

Francisco Acuña, Valencia

Union leaders and workers have to take to the streets to mobilize and fight for the 6 hour work day and the inclusion of the workers in the informal sector.

Our revolutionary process requires and deserves a profound and urgent change. There is no time or possibility for superficial changes. A debate on the great political and economic decisions has to be started with the masses, with social, popular and political organisations, and we need a revolutionary newspaper.

There has to be no more appointed functionaries who are interested in their own personal gain. The role of the Ministers of Popular Power must be usurped, so that the decisions referred to them are debated and decided by those who will be affected by these decisions.

There must be no more salaries that allow (state) bureaucrats to live as though in Saudi Venezuela, buying properties and staying in luxurious hotels. This has nothing to do with socialism, and the workers demand that all those involved in this (corruption), all the inefficient and unscrupulous functionaries are fired.

Those who work for the process (the revolution) those that sacrifice each day, the true workers’ leaders and the social leaders in the barrios, that are part of, and reflect the people, have to be involved.

Los dirigentes sindicales y los trabajadores tenemos que salir a movilizarnos y a conquistar hoy las 6 horas de trabajo y la inclusión de los informales.

Nuestro proceso revolucionario necesita y se merece un cambio profundo y urgente. Ya no hay tiempo ni posibilidades de cambios superficiales. Hay que abrir el debate de las grandes decisiones políticas y económicas con las bases, con las organizaciones sociales, populares y políticas del proceso, y necesitamos un periódico revolucionario.

Hay que terminar con los funcionarios elegidos a dedo que no reflejan más que sus intereses personales. Replantearse el rol de los Ministros del Poder Popular, para que todas las decisiones referidas a cada uno sean debatidas y decididas por las bases involucradas.

Hay que terminar con los salarios de funcionarios que viven como en Venezuela Saudita, que compran propiedades y duermen en lujosos hoteles. Eso nada tiene que ver con un proyecto socialista, y las bases reclamamos la salida de todos los involucrados en este proceso, la renuncia de estos ineficientes e inescrupulosos funcionarios.

Hay que darle paso a los que trabajan por el proceso, a los que se sacrifican a diario desde las bases, a los verdaderos liderazgos obreros y los populares en los barrios, que son parte y reflejo directo de sus sectores sociales.

Union Nacional de Trabajadores sindicalistas, Venezuela

Democratisation of communication is the way that the people can participate in the production and distribution of information through the media, and undercut the 80 per cent of the media that reflects the priorities of capitalism.

This revolutionary form of communication should spread from the masses who support the government - from each battalion, in each consejo comunal, in every community.

La democratización de la comunicación es la vía para que el pueblo participe en la producción y distribución de los mensajes mediáticos, de darse esto no importará que más del 80 por ciento de los medios informativos respondan al modo de producción capitalista. Esta forma revolucionaria de comunicación debe desplegarse desde las bases de quienes apoyan al gobierno - en cada batallón, en cada consejo comunal, en cada pueblo.

María Rivas, Barrio Catia, Caracas

We are not going to hear those opinionated commentators who accused Chávez of being a dictator, an autocrat, a manipulator, gorilla or Castrocommunist - all the insults and lies of the politicians, café society, columnists and editorialists - apologise after the President immediately accepted without any objection the adverse result, but in 2 seconds - crash! - the entire media slander collapsed.

If only Colombia or México could show the same confidence and trust in their (electoral) institutions!

This is the moment to attend to the democratic capacity of the PSUV, changing a strategy that had prioritised quantity over quality, and that had hindered the activists from participating. This is the moment to make internal discussion - the multiplicity of dissident opinions - a democratic requisite.

No vamos a escuchar al grueso de los opinólogos que han acusado a Chávez de dictador, autócrata, manipulador, gorila o castrocomunista - todos los insultos y calumnias de políticos, tertulianos, columnistas y editorialistas - entonar un mea culpa después de que el Presidente aceptara de inmediato y sin ningún reparo el resultado adverso, pero en dos segundos - ¡derrumbó! - la calumnia mediática fracasó.

¡Ojala mostrara el ejército la misma fidelidad institucional en Colombia, en México!

Es el momento de mimar la capacidad democrática del PSUV, revirtiendo una estrategia que ha primado la cantidad a la calidad y que ha impedido que sea la base quien se encuentre con su verdadero instrumento de emancipación. Es el momento de hacer de la discusión interna un requisito democrático, de multiplicar las disidencias.

Juan Carlos Monedero, Madrid, España

What did the opposition win? Not much really. The opposition simply achieved to slow down a little the revolution’s advance that continues as before.

And what did the opposition lose? They lost the few cards they had left - the claims that elections can’t be trusted, that President Chávez wouldn’t recognize the result, that Chavistas are violent. And now, furthermore, they have now declared themselves fervent defenders of the Bolivarian Constitution, which is more a victory for us.

¿Qué ganó la oposición? No mucho, realmente. La oposición simplemente logró frenar un poco el avance de la revolución para quedar igual que antes.
¿Y qué perdieron? Perdieron algunas banderas de las muy pocas que disponían.
Que el árbitro no es confiable, que el presidente Chávez no reconocería su triunfo, que los chavistas son violentos. Y ahora, además, se han declarado fervientes defensores de la constitución Bolivariana, lo cual es más bien un triunfo para nosotros.

What did the revolutionaries lose? A tool to accelerate the advance of the revolution, that maybe wasn’t well explained or was proposed at the wrong moment.

And what did we gain? An increase in our international prestige as an eminently democratic people, with a great democratic leader, and the opportunity to reflect, improve and rectify our strategies before it becomes too late.

¿Qué perdimos los revolucionarios? Una herramienta para aligerar el avance de la revolución, que tal vez no fue bien sustentada o se propuso en el momento equivocado.
¿Y que ganamos? Aumento de nuestro prestigio internacional como pueblo eminentemente democrático, con un gran líder demócrata, y la oportunidad de reflexionar, pulir y rectificar las estrategias antes de que sea demasiado tarde.

What happened was the best thing that could have happened. Considering the adversary that we faced, it wouldn’t have suited us to win the referendum with a small margin. If we were not going to win with a sufficient margin, it was better to lose.

The rapid recognition of our adversary’s victory, without any scheming, was taken by our entire movement in a disciplined manner and saved the country from who knows how much unnecessary violence.

Lo que pasó fue lo mejor que pudo pasar. Ante un adversario como el que enfrentamos, de ninguna manera nos convenía ganar el referendo con un margen estrecho. Si no ganábamos con suficiente ventaja, era mejor perder.

El rápido reconocimiento del triunfo del adversario, sin ninguna mezquindad, fue asumido por todo nuestro movimiento de manera disciplinada y le ahorró al país no se sabe cuantos actos de violencia innecesarios.

Ramón Prada, Caracas

One learns more from defeats than from victories.

The victory of the No could be considered a triumph of fear, of manipulation, terror, ignorance and disinformation.

Now, we should do away with easy slogans and take the ideological battle to the heart of the people.

De las derrotas se aprende más que de las victorias.

El triunfo del No podría ser considerado un triunfo del miedo, de la manipulación, del terror, de la ignorancia y de la desinformación.

Ahora, debemos derribar el slogan fácil y debemos ir a la batalla ideológica profunda en el seno de nuestro pueblo.

Oscar Figuera, Partido Comunista de Venezuela (PCV), Caracas

The opposition still has no direction, coherence or respect as a political force.

Should the right retake the presidency someday, ensure that revolutionary organisation on the ground, in the barrios, in workplaces, remains strong and independent to protect the gains that have been made.

Colombians expected Chávez, on hearing that the vote was lost, to declare martial law, send tanks onto the streets and soldiers into the TV studios.

To see this guy talking without formalities, without notes, with humour and grace, telling the opposition to enjoy their evening, and even debating the impact of the result in interactions with the people in the audience, openly and honestly, left Colombians a little disorientated.

I think this defeat and the grace in which the Chávistas have taken it will actually go a long way towards undercutting the propaganda war against the revolution.

La oposición todavía no tiene ninguna dirección, coherencia o respeto como una fuerza política.

Los derechistas deben toma la presidencia algún día, asegurar que la organisación revolucionaria - en los barrios, en los lugares de trabajo - permanezca fuerte e independiente para proteger los logros que han hecho.

Los colombianos esperaron que Chávez, cuando el escuchó que el voto había sido perdido, declarara la ley martial, enviando tanques a las calles, y soldados a los estudios de televisión.

Para mirar este man hablando sin formalidades, sin notas, y con humor y gracia, diciéndole a la oposición que disfrutaran su tarde, y aún debatiendo el impacto de los resultados con la audencia, abierta y honestamente, dejando a los colombianos un poco desorientados.

Yo creo que esta derrota y la gracia con lo que los Chavistas han aceptado, realmente lo hará disminuir la guerra de propaganda contra la revolución.

Rocío Jiménez, Bogotá, Colombia

We have been unable to achieve a revolutionary process from below, with high levels of popular protagonism, and the Bolivarian revolution is still essentially led from the top.

Lots of people that are with the revolution, refrained this time from voting because they are being increasingly marginalized by a centralized State revolutionary process. They feel it is not their revolution.

It is a revolution that being handed down to them. They are not the subjects of the process, but its mere objects. And this is what disenfranchised and alienated 3 million potential supporters. This is the wrong path that led us into defeat.

Nosotros no hemos podido lograr un proceso revolucionario desde abajo, con altos niveles de protagonismo popular, y la revolución Bolivariana esta todavía dirigida desde la cima.

Mucha gente que está con la revolución se abstuvo, esta vez, de votar porque ellos están siendo aumentados marginalmente por un proceso revolucionario y centralizado del estado. Ellos sienten que no es su revolución.

Es una revolución que está dándoles a ellos. Ellos no son los sujetos del proceso, pero son los meros objectos. Y esto es lo que causado el disenfranchisimiento y la alienación de tres millones de partidarios. Este es el camino errado que ha dirigido a la derrota.

Teresa Arraíz, Ciudad Bolívar

How can the opposition move beyond its stupid, monotonous and shallow ‘anti-dictator’ mantra? They can't, because they have nothing of substance beyond it to offer.

The revolution has occupied, with its vast and deep program of social reforms, all possible political space.

Besides, as soon as the opposition tries to agree on a proposal that is not just tired propaganda, they will explode into a myriad of fragments.

Nothing truly strategic and positive holds together the opposition's fragile concoction of contradictory and petty motives.

¿Cómo puede la oposición moverse por encima de la mantra estúpida, monótona y superficial de ‘contra-dictador’? No pueden, porque no tienen nada de substancia para ofrecer.

La revolución ha ocupado, con su programa de inmensas y profundas reformas sociales, todo el espacio político posible..

Además, tan pronto como la opocisión intenta estar de acuerdo en un propuesta que no es propaganda cansada, ellos estallarán en una miríada de fragmentos.

Nada verdadamente estratégico y positivo sostiene juntos la mezcla frágil de los motivos contradictorios e insignificantes de la opocisión.

Augusto Piñango, Santa Rosalía, Portuguesa

We haven’t lost anything - just a possibility, but we are going to convince our compañeros, those who have doubts, those who have fears… raise the socialist standard, learn more, unite together, teach, and continue demonstrating through action - more than through theories - what socialism is.

No hemos perdido nada, en verdad perdimos sí una posibilidad, pero vamos a convencer a los compañeros, a los habitantes, a los que tienen dudas, a los que tienen temores… levanta la bandera del socialismo, estudiemos más, compactémonos mucho más, expliquemos más y sigamos ahora demostrando en los hechos en qué consiste, más allá de la teoría, la propuesta socialista.

President Hugo Chávez

***

Chavez's concession speech:

I prefer it like this. I prefer that it ends like this.

Lo prefiero así. Yo prefiero que haya terminado así.

I am calm, as I hope all Venezuelans are at this moment. Let us all be proud with what we have done, and continue to respect each other.
Now, we must all recognize the decision, the very tiny margin. I say this to emphasis all those who voted Sí and to say to the leaders of the opposition - I sincerely hope you know how to deal with this success.

Estoy tranquilo, como espero que los venezolanos, a partir de este momento, también lo hagan. Estemos todos orgullosos con lo que hemos hecho, cada quien en su ámbito, con sus posiciones, respetando al otro.
Ahora, todos debemos reconocer que es una decisión ahí, muy chiquitica. Digo esto para recordar a quienes votaron por el Sí y a los dirigentes de oposición, mi sincera recomendación de que sepan administrar esa victoria.

I will sleep tranquilly. Those who are going to celebrate should know how to manage their victory. You gained it, but I wouldn’t have wanted such a pyrrhic victory… the vote totals are irreversible, and I recognize that.

I congratulate my adversaries on this victory - it was a hard fight.

For now, we couldn’t… (but) the reform proposal is still alive, it hasn’t died.

Yo dormiré tranquilo. Los que vayan a celebrar que sepan administrar su victoria. Ustedes se la ganaron, pero yo esa victoria pírrica no la hubiera querido. Más bien prefiero que las cifras hayan llegado al nivel de irreversibilidad y sentarme delante de todos ustedes a reconocerlo.
Felicito a mis adversarios por esa victoria; nosotros estamos hechos para una batalla larga. Por ahora no pudimos… La propuesta de reforma está viva, no ha muerto.

I assume the responsibility for not achieving 50 per cent plus one for the proposal - but it nearly achieved it.

It has to be accepted: in Venezuela, despite all the scheming and lies, as President Castro described it a few days ago, a people under fire - under an intense artillery fire of lies and fears - still voted 49 per cent for the socialist project. Despite everything, this is a great political advance.

Yo asumo la responsabilidad de esta propuesta, que no logró el 50 por ciento más uno; pero casi lo logro.
Hay que aceptarlo: venimos de una situación donde en Venezuela no había rumbo político, a pesar de todas las artimañas y mentiras que circularon, como el Presidente Castro lo describió hace unos días, un pueblo bajo fuego - fue sometido a un intenso fuego de artillería de mentiras y temores - sin embargo, que haya votado 49 por ciento por el proyecto socialista, a pesar de todo es un gran paso político.

We continue the battle to construct socialism, within the Constitution. In the proposal there are very audacious ideas, without precedents.
I will not erase a single comma of this proposal. The proposal continues…

Nosotros seguimos en la batalla por la construcción del socialismo, en el marco de la Constitución. En la propuesta hay ideas muy audaces, sin precedentes.
Ni una sola coma de esta propuesta, yo la retiro. La propuesta la continúo haciendo…

We lost 3 million votes - for what reasons? It is necessary to evaluate, although I am completely confident that the immense majority of those people continue with us, those who did not vote Sí. They abstained; had doubts, fears, no time - there was no chance to explain….There are many political factors that we must take into account in this battle… we respected the rules of the game… (and) it is not the first time.

A nosotros nos faltaron 3 millones de votos de personas que no fueron a votar. ¿Por cuáles razones? Hay que evaluarlo, estoy completamente seguro que la inmensa mayoría de esas personas sigue con nosotros, que no votaron por el Sí; se abstuvieron: dudas, temores, faltó tiempo, capacidad para explicar….Hay bastantes elementos políticos que debemos tomar en cuenta en esta batalla… respetamos las reglas del juego… No es la primera vez.

The Chief of State invited the foreign journalists present to this concession, to observe how Venezuela continues speaking openly, with freedom of expression, criticism and demonstrations - as it has always done - and so to cause the accusations of a supposed dictatorship in Venezuela to crumble.

El Jefe de estado conminó a los periodistas extranjeros presentes en la alocución, a observar cómo en Venezuela se continuará hablando abiertamente, libertad de expresión, críticas y manifestaciones, como siempre ha sido, con lo que se desmoronan las acusaciones de una supuesta dictadura en Venezuela.

No more in Venezuela will there be elections as in the past… when the (workers’) Communist vote was torn between Acción Democrática and COPEI. This vote is a demonstration of the credibility and confidence that we have in our Constitution and in the institutions (misions and consejos comunales) that have been created as part of our Bolivarian democracy.

Ya nunca se verá en Venezuela lo que veíamos nosotros en las elecciones del pasado…cuando el Partido Comunista se lo repartían entre la Acción Democrática y el COPEI. Esta es una demostración de la credibilidad que debemos tener en nuestra Constitución y en las instituciones que ha creado, en nuestro sistema político de la democracia bolivariana.

I congratulate those who voted for the proposal and those who rejected it - to those who had doubts, this one (democracy) is the way… I hope they will now spurn, for ever, their nihilistic road to violence, destabilization and ignorance.
Venezuelan democracy is becoming mature and each process that we experience, each political moment, is allowing our country to continue advancing this new Bolivarian project that began in 1999.

Felicito a quienes votaron por la propuesta y quienes la rechazaron - a aquellos que tenían dudas, éste es el camino y ojalá se olviden, para siempre, de las trochas, los saltos al vacío, de los caminos de la violencia, de la desestabilización y el desconocimiento.
La democracia venezolano va madurando y cada proceso que vivimos, cada jornada política, va permitiendo que nuestro país continúe madurando, en este nuevo proyecto Bolivariano que comenzó en 1999.

To paraphrase the Liberator, Simón Bolivar, who, at the moment of presenting the text of Bolivia’s Constitution, said that if it was not accepted, he would bequeath it for the future, the reform proposal is entrusted to the immediate future.

(With this vote) our Bolivarian Constitution, so hard fought for, has finally been recognised by the opposition.

The opposition have to defend the Constitution… I hope (the opposition’s participation in the vote) hasn’t been a momentary political tactic. I want to have faith. We are going to construct the Venezuela that the Constitution reflects.

Parafrasear al Libertador Simón Bolívar, cuando en la oportunidad de entregar el texto de la Constitución de Bolivia, dicho que si no lo aceptaban lo legaría para el futuro, esta propuesta de Reforma la lega para un futuro inmediato.

Nuestra tan luchada constitución…que por cierto, uno de los grandes logros es que la oposición reconoció esta Constitución Bolivariana.
Han salido a defenderla. Espero que no haya sido un recurso momentáneo y manejo electorero. Quiero creer en la buena fe. Vamos a construir la Venezuela que aquí esta reflejada.

Al Jazeera English on the Venezuelan Referendum

2007-12-14T11:29:00.000-08:00

On Friday, December 7th, Al Jazeera's programme The Listening Post analysed the world's media biased coverage of the constitutional reform referendum. Amongst those interviewed was Alan Woods, founder of Hands Off Venezuela.

Manifesto to the Bolivian People

2007-09-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

Manifesto to the Bolivian People

Summit of the social organisations of the indigenous, originario, campesino peoples and nations and the popular organisation of the cities of the Bolivia

http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2007/09/manifesto-to-bolivian-people.html <http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2007/09/manifesto-to-bolivian-people.html>

The demand for a Constituent Assembly arose as a democratic and peaceful response by the working people, in the face of the genocide and massacres by Banzer, Tuto Quiroga, Sanchez de Lozada, the same ones who preferred to drown the homeland in blood or divide the country rather that lose their class and caste privileges.

It was the democratic vote of the people which guaranteed the convoking of the Constituent Assembly, it was the democratic vote which elected the constituent delegates, providing space for minorities and majorities, with the responsibility of uniting Bolivians, ending injustices and recognising the rights of the excluded and discriminated indigenous peoples.

That is why today, at the same time as telling Bolivia and the world that we are here, standing up with dignity and commitment in order to defend to Constituent Assembly, we call on all Bolivian people, workers and business owners, indigenous peoples and mestizos, citizens of the east and west, students, professionals, middle classes, neighbours, house wives and young people who love our beloved homeland to struggle, distribute, mobilise and defend the following 18 strategic points of the new Political Constitution of the State that will guarantee the democratic unity of the homeland, equality between people, the collective rights of the indigenous, originario, campesino peoples, the nationalisation of natural wealth and the widening of social rights.

1. A Unitary, Plurinational, Communitarian and Democratic State , where all peoples, cultures, languages, have the same rights, opportunities and are recognised in the same manner in front of the law, institutions and society. The Plurinational Communitarian State has as its foundation well being, and the decolonisation of the state that for centuries has discriminated and marginalized people due to their language, their skin colour, their surname or tradition. The Plurinational, Communitarian and Democratic State guarantees the unity of all Bolivians within a single and indivisible homeland, but at the same time recognised the right of each indigenous people to preserve their culture and tradition.

2. Plurinational Public Adminstration. All public functionaries should know the dominant indigenous language of the region where they work so as to be able to communicate with the peoples, the Spanish language, to be able to communicate with the rest of the Bolivians, and a foreign language, in order to be linked with the world.

3. A Unitary State with municipal, departmental, regional and indigenous, originario, campesino autonomies that guarantee the unity of the state, solidarity between regions and the democratic decentralisation of power.

4. The Nationalisation of Natural Resources, renewable and non-renewable, under the control and ownership of the Bolivian people. Never again will gas, petroleum, mining resources, water, land nor forests be the property of foreigners. All natural resources will be the property of Bolivian, for use by Bolivians, and for the benefit of Bolivians.

5. Sovereign Natural Resources. It is totally prohibited for non-state organisations to directly involve themselves in the administration, management, control and preservation of forests, parks and natural reserves, as well as biodiversity, all of which are under the control of the state.

6. Taxes on large fortunes. Those that have accumulated enormous wealth should pay larger taxes for the benefit of the most needy.

7. Social and Communitarian Economy. The state will participate in the strategic sectors of the economy. The state recognises that private Bolivian investment is a factor in productive development, and that foreign private investment will be subordinated to national development plans, and that medium and small rural producers, agrarian communities and productive associations will receive state protection, economic support, credits, technology and infrastructure in order to guarantee the well being of society.

8. The state respects, guarantees and protects medium and small private property, and communitarian, cooperative and mixed property. Private property should guarantee that it plays an effective social function in the benefit of human beings.

9. Expropriation without indemnification of latifundio and its immediate distribution between producers and those from the countryside and city who are willing to produce for the benefit of society.

10. Re-election and revocation by popular mandate of any elected authority. Now, never again will authorities be immovable nor owners of their positions. The people are sovereign and the people can ratify or change their authorities when they so desire.

11. Election of all authorities of the Judicial Power to democratise, decolonise and nationalise the justice system. Now, never again will citizens be the objects of blackmail by a dehumanising, insensitive and abusive justice system

12. Recognition of communitarian justice as an alternative, complementary and ancestral form of solving differences and conflicts.

13. Racism is a grave crime against society and the state. All manifestations, public or private expressions of racism, of exclusion for ethnic, cultural, linguistic reasons will be criminally sanctioned.

14. Plurinational Parliament with only one chamber guaranteeing the same number of current representative for each department. No more chambers of elites and privilege.

15. In the fight against corruption, the state does not recognise the prescription of the crime and investigations can be retroactive. Widen the power of the state to investigate fortunes.

16. All goods implicated in acts of corruption will be confiscated by the state for the benefit of the people.

17. All Bolivian men and women, from birth until death, have the right to health service in equal conditions.

18. Total Elimination of illiteracy Passed on tenth day of the month of September of two thousand and seven.

=======================================================

Bolivia's indigenous and social movements: "If dialogue ends, we will assume more radical measures"

Resolution passed by the Social Summit of Social Movements, held in Sucre on
September 10, 2007

http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2007/09/bolivias-indigenous-and-social.html

Considering:

That, the Constituent Assembly is a space for the construction of a new state, with the participation of all Bolivian men and women, and is a conquest of the people, which has cost the blood of the indigenous, originario, campesino nations and popular classes, and a long historic resistance in the face of the neoliberal roscas[1], who privatised natural resources, strategic companies and took advantage of the spaces of power for their own personal benefit.

That, the Bolivian people, expressed in the form of the social movements, for the first time are actors in the construction of a new state, having been marginalise for more than 500 years, where injustice and inequality created great differences.

Therefore, the summit of the social organisations of the indigenous, originario, campesino nations and people and the popular organisations of the cities of Bolivia, resolves:

1. Defend, including with our lives, the Constituent Assembly and this process of irreversible profound change being driven forward by the historic forces of our peoples and the indigenous, originario and campesino nations, together with the popular organisations.

2. That in the case of there not being democratic guarantees for the installation of sessions [of the Constituent Assembly], we demand that the sessions should be immediately installed in another department, maintain the city of Sucre as the centre of operations.

3. We support our sister Silvia Lazarte Flores, president of the Constituent Assembly who, due to being an indigenous woman who wear a pollera [indigenous dress], was discriminated against by racist oligarchic sectors from the city of Sucre.

4. We rule out and reject in a firm manner, the ruling laid down by the District Superior Court of Chuquisaca [2], which was an act that was a perversion of justice and an attack on the independent and foundational character of the Constituent Assembly. We can not allow a resolution approved by a majority of assembly delegates, elected by the people, to be ruled out of order by two judges named from above, according to a sharing out of quotas of power between the traditional parties of the right.

5. We demand that the assembly delegates, in accordance with moral and ethical principals, do not receive their salaries for days not worked.

6. The social movements of the countryside and city will defend the process of change, headed by Evo Morales Ayma, Constitutional President of the Republic, who has been carrying out deep structural changes, in the economic, in the political, in the social and in the cultural sphere, in compliance with the mandate of the people.

7. We demands that the convening of the National Congress and the presidential report given every August 6, take on a rotational character between the 9 departments, based on a principal of equality, equity and justice.

8. We denounce in front of the international community and human rights organisations, the aggression and insults directed at social organisations and assembly delegates, the burning of the symbols of the indigenous, originario and campesino peoples, and the destruction of the headquarters of the social organisations.

9. We warn that a small groups of the fascist elites, by continuing to misinform the population, are prejudicing the Constituent Assembly, and that if the dialogue ends, we will assume other more radical measures, which we as social organisations reserve the right to use.

10. The social organisations of the countryside and the city declare ourselves in a state of emergency, permanent vigil and commit ourselves to organising Committees in Defence of the Constituent Assembly, via out confederations, federation, neighbourhood committees, associations, unions, capitanías, tentas, ayllus[2] and all social and popular organisations to guarantee the functioning of the Constituent Assembly and consolidate our proposals in the new Political Constitution of the State.

Passed in the city of Sucre on the ten day of the month of September of 2007.

Notes

[1] Rosca was the word given to describe the oligarchy tie to tin and silver mining during the first half of the 20 th century.

[2] The Superior District Superior Court of Chuquisaca ruled the overturning of a plenary decision by the majority of the delegates of the Constituent Assembly to eliminate debate around the capital. [3] capitanías, tentas, and ayllus Indigenous communitarian forms of organisation

Allende's Grandson speaks in Caracas on 34th anniversary of Chilean Coup

2007-09-12T20:03:00.000-07:00

Gonzalo Meza Allende, the grandson of Salvador Allende, spoke in Caracas, Venezuela yesterday, during a commemorative ceremony on the 34th anniversary of Pinochet’s coup d’etat, which overthrew and assassinated the democratically elected Chilean President, Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973.

I want to thank you for the invitation to commemorate this significant day in history, not just for Chile but for the entire world.

I want to take the opportunity to reflect with you—Venezuelans, Chileans, and Latin American friends—on the similarities and differences with the process that my grandfather led when he took power in 1970. But the history should leave us lessons to learn from.

Just as with the Venezuelan Process, in Chile we needed a leader of international status. You have President Hugo Chavez, elected democratically like Salvador Allende. They both came to power through the electoral route.

But the first difference, which Venezuela has overcome well, is that in Chile the Popular Unity did not obtain the absolute majority of 50%. It never had an absolute majority, and how important it is to have the support of much more than half the people. Value this, my friends; Venezuela has more than 50% that support Chavez.

Allende is the figure that symbolizes the project on the road to Socialism of the 20th Century, through the democratic means. President Chavez is the Socialism of the 21st Century. It is true, they are different global contexts. Allende lived in the era of the Cold War; the pressure so that he would ally with the Soviet Communists, or that which he also staunchly opposed- state capitalism, the capitalism of the North America.

Therefore, he always spoke of the Chilean way. In Venezuela, you have proclaimed the Venezuelan road to Socialism. Now there is no Cold War, but be careful, the country acting as the world super-power is the same and attempts to control the global economy and ideology. This has not changed. And there you have another great similarity and difference with the Chilean process. The United States openly intervened in both countries, attempting to overthrow, through the treason of the Armed Forces and with the support of large business interests, both governments, Chilean and Venezuelan, democratically elected, for not being aligned to their interests. What they unfortunately achieved in Chile in 1973 and what they couldn’t achieve in Venezuela—another important lesson from this century.

From here, the birthplace of Latin American unity, with the force of the ideas of Simon Bolivar still alive, to work for the great homeland of integration from Patagonia to Rio Grande to the North of Mexico- Allende also always pushed for Latin American unity, the unity of our region. And it is not just a coincidence that he traveled with the Chilean delegation in 1967 to the conference of the Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS). We are once again inspired to work for Latin American unity. It is paradoxical. We have the same language, the same cultures, values. We have a region that unites many and nevertheless, it has cost us so much to unite this region.

Nevertheless, we have examples like the European Union, where despite two World Wars, they have been capable of today working together. Let us learn the lessons from other parts of the world to apply here. We need Latin American unity and we are working and advancing for it.

In relation to Latin American unity, I cite the following, spoken by my grandfather. He said, citing Bolivar:

“The United States wants to subject us to misery in the name of freedom, and Marti has made ever harsher statements, and I don’t care to repeat them, because in reality I distinguish between the North American people and its freethinkers, and the sometimes transitory attitude of some of their leaders and the politics of the State Department and the private interests that have counted on North American support.”

That’s what my grandfather said more than thirty-five years ago, and I continue saying it. We know well the South America scenario: That although a potentially rich continent, it is a poor continent fundamentally from the exploitation, because it is the victim of private North American capital. This has not changed and we need to struggle against it.

“We struggle fundamentally for the integration of Latin American countries. We believe that it is a just road indicated by the founding fathers of the homeland, who dreamed of Latin American unity, to be able to build a continental voice before the world.”

My grandfather spoke these words more than thirty years ago and they are still true today, exactly as they sound. That is why the similarities are inevitable. If we remember: The destiny- of the revolutionary process of change that the Venezuelan society is looking for - is in your hands.

Once more, I thank you for the homage of Salvador Allende, who was always an exceptional man before his time. At 34 years since his death, we should better understand his words, and let us listen carefully to what he said:

“It is clear that we believe that dialogue is fundamental. People like us fight for peace and not for war, for economic cooperation and not exploitation, for social coexistence and not for injustice.”

Many—millions and millions of people across the world—follow closely the significance of the Socialism of the 21st Century that President Chavez is putting forth, as the Socialist process was put forth in Chile, last century. And I end remembering once more the force of my grandfather’s words. Once more, even more than the exceptional coherence, as if he was—and he is—here with us. And I cite his version of the 21st Century, expressed in 1972. He said:

“And that’s why I believe that the man of the 21st Century should be a man with a different conception; with another scale of values; a man that is not essentially and fundamentally moved by money; a man that believes that there exists a different measure of fortune, in which intelligence is the great creative force”

Many thanks again, Venezuelan friends. Good luck, in great solidarity and support from Chile.

Venezuelan Constitution changed to help create Socialism

2007-08-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

Chavez Proposes Changes to Venezuela’s Constitution to Pave Way for Socialism

By: Kiraz Janicke – Venezuelanalysis.com

Caracas, August 17, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com) – On August 15, the third anniversary of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s victory in the recall referendum of 2004, and the 202nd anniversary of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar’s famous oath of Monte Sacro, where he swore not to rest “until the chains of oppression are lifted from my people,” tens of thousands of Venezuelans turned out to an extraordinary session of National Assembly to hear the president’s proposed constitutional reform.

Recounting the experiences and achievements of the Bolivarian Revolution over the last eight years, including the Constituent Assembly and referendum of 1999, which founded the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the opposition military coup on April 11th, 2002 and its “victorious defeat” on April 13th and the oil industry lockout which nearly crippled the Venezuelan economy in early 2003, Chavez confessed, “I am emotional today, because I believe this proposal will open doors to a new era.”

The 1999 constitution was “ambiguous” he said “a product of that moment. The world is very different today than 1999.” The new constitutional reforms are “essential for continuing the process of revolutionary transition,” he assured.

New Geometry of Power

Outlining his far-reaching proposal for transforming the Venezuelan state, Chavez called for “a new geometry of power.” Key to this is an amendment to article 16 in the constitution, which states; “The national territory is divided into states, the Capital District, federal dependencies and federal territories. The territory is organized in Municipalities” to be replaced by; “The territorial political division will be determined by the organic law that guarantees municipal autonomy and political decentralization.”

Declaring that, “regionalism, is dogma, that impedes change, [and] we can not accept situations that create Caudillos,” he said the new law would allow for the creation, through popular referendum, of “federal districts” in specific areas, which could then be categorized as states and assigned all or part of the respective territory.

This proposal, he maintained, is “profoundly revolutionary,” and necessary “to remove the old oligarchic, exploiter hegemony, the old society, and, in the words of Gramsci, to weaken the old “historic block.” “If we don’t change the superstructure, the old superstructure will defeat us,” he continued.

The proposal also allows municipalities, “with the acceptance of the people within the municipality,” to create territory or land in common, which would be under the direct government of the community and, according to Chavez, would constitute “the basic nucleus of the socialist state.”

Chavez also said unions or federations of self-governing communes, could be created through popular referendum, through the communal councils, and aggregations of communal councils.

Additionally, through the incorporation of the social missions into the constitution, “functional districts,” could be also be created by one or more municipalities, where the social missions would function as alternative administrations to the traditional bureaucratic institutions.

Chavez declared it was necessary to re-order the country in view of increasing population growth, saying, “one day Venezuela will have 40-50 million people.”

In light of this, he argued it was also necessary to “restructure Caracas,” in terms of urban development, construction of roads, environmental recuperation and measures to achieve the optimal levels of public and personal security, strengthen systems of health, education, sport and culture, as well as the formation of small and medium satellite cities.

Another key aspect of the “new geometry of power” would be the ability of the president to declare special military zones in any part of the country with the strategic aim of defense, and decree special authorities in situations of contingency such as natural disasters.

Popular Power

In addition to the previously existing “public powers” recognized in the constitution such as the judiciary, legislative, executive and so on, Chavez also called for the incorporation of “popular power” into article 70, saying there was a need to decentralize and transfer power to the organized communities to create the best conditions for socialist democracy.

Article 70, Chavez assured, would also “reaffirm means of participation and protagonism of the people in direct exercise of their sovereignty for the construction of socialism,” through election to public positions, referendums, popular consultation, recall of elected officials (including the president), constitutional legislative initiatives, and open assemblies.

“Sovereignty rests with the people,” Chavez continued, “and should be exercised directly through the organs of popular power.” According to Chavez, popular power would be expressed through “the organized communities,” in various forms such as the communes, self-government of the towns and cities, the communal councils, workers councils, campesino councils, student councils, and others councils indicated in the law.

Political Sphere

In a move vehemently opposed by Venezuelan opposition parties, Chavez also proposed an amendment to article 203, which would allow for unlimited presidential re-elections, (countries such as France, Australia, Germany, and England allow for unlimited reelection), a move the opposition claims would lead to ‘dictatorship’. The proposed change would also extend presidential terms from six to seven years.

According Venezuelan vice-president Jorge Rodriguez, the opposition campaign against unlimited reelections is not out of concern for ‘democracy’, given that they supported a military coup against Chavez’s democratically elected government in 2002, but rather a tacit recognition of their inability to compete with Chavez in the electoral sphere.

However, as with all other aspects of the constitutional reform, which are required to be ratified through a popular referendum, Chavez affirmed that “reelection is the sovereign decision of the constituent people of Venezuela.”

Social and Cultural Rights

Chavez also called for the revision of article 100, to recognize Venezuela as a product of a diverse historical confluence of cultures and recommended the implementation of programs to promote equality for indigenous peoples and peoples of African descent. Additionally, proposed alterations to article 87 (which relates to social rights and rights of the family), would guarantee the right to work and promote the development of policies to generate productive employment. The state would also create a Social Stability Fund for ‘non-dependent’ or self employed workers such as taxi drivers, fishermen, and artisans, among others, to guarantee them the same fundamental rights as other workers such as retirement pensions, paid vacations and prenatal and postnatal leave entitlements.

Economy

The proposal calls for the constitution to promote a diverse and independent mixed economy to guarantee the social necessities of the people. While article 115 would continue to recognize and guarantee different forms of property, including private property, it would promote the development of social production and social property including direct/communal social property and indirect/state managed social property.

Chavez also called for the promotion and self-management of communal property, communal micro-financing organizations, cooperatives of communal property (which he distinguished from capitalist cooperatives) communal savings banks, networks of free associated producers, voluntary work, and community businesses as mechanisms toward the implementation of a new social system.

While monopolies would be banned under article 102, the following modification of article 302 would guarantee state control over the oil industry, closing off any potential loophole that would allow privatization of this resource; “The State reserves, for reasons of sovereignty, development and the national interest, the activity of exploitation of liquid, solid, and gaseous hydrocarbons as well as the exploitation of goods and services of public interest and strategic character.”

Other key changes in the economic sphere include the removal of “any vestige of autonomy” for the Central Bank of Venezuela and the elimination of the Macroeconomic Stabilization Fund under articles 318 and 321. Chavez has previously described the autonomy of the BCV as “a neoliberal idea.”

Chavez also plans to modify article 90 of the constitution to reduce the workday from eight hours to six, saying, the objective is that workers have sufficient time for integral and moral development of their personality, for participation, education, spiritual and recreational pursuits.

The reduction of the workday, he argued, would oblige businesses to open new shifts and therefore increase levels of permanent and productive employment, allowing time for volunteer work and contribute to the reduction of the informal economy and unemployment currently at 8 per cent.

Redefining the Military

Chavez also proposed a redefinition of the role of the military through a modification of article 328, which currently states “The National Armed Forces constitute an essentially professional institution, politically unaligned, organized by the state to guarantee the independence and sovereignty of the nation.”

This would be replaced by, “The Bolivarian Armed Forces constitute an essentially patriotic, popular and anti-imperialist body organized by the state to guarantee the independence and sovereignty of the nation” and the “application of principles of integral military defense and popular resistance war”

Declaring that “the old structure of the Reserves had many legal, structural and financial limitations,” Chavez proposed the amendment of article 329 to transform the Reserves into the Popular Bolivarian Militia constituted as the fifth official component of the Bolivarian Armed Forces, alongside the Bolivarian Army, the Bolivarian Navy, the Bolivarian Air Force, and the Bolivarian Territorial Guard (currently the National Guard). The role of the Territorial Guard would be integrated with other components of the armed forces. “The said bodies would be structured in combined garrison units, combined training units and combined units for joint operations,” signifying the “fusion” of the Armed Forces, he explained.

Summarizing his proposal as follows, “In the political terrain, the deepening of popular Bolivarian democracy; in the economy, the preparation for the best conditions for the construction of a socialist production model; in the field of public administration; incorporation of new structures to leave behind bureaucracy; in social matters, to increase the rights of workers in all imaginable spheres, and in the cultural the inclusion of our peoples of indigenous and African descent, the deepening of our anti-imperialist and patriotic consciousness,” Chavez called for a “grand debate in all areas of society.”

“Some pollsters try to manipulate public opinion, formulating questions such as “do you support democracy or socialism?” “But the people aren’t stupid. Only through socialism can you construct true democracy,” added Chavez.

The proposed constitutional reform, which aims to change 33 articles, or approximately 10% of the 1999 constitution, is set to be debated in three extraordinary sessions of the National Assembly over the next two-three months before going to a popular referendum.

PeoplePower in Venezuela- Eyewitness audio

2007-06-04T00:20:00.001-07:00

People’s Power in Venezuela
for more info please visit VAST website

The Bolivarian Revolution led by President Hugo Chavez is challenging

George Bush’s “Evil Empire”.

Chavez’s call for “Socialism in the 21st Century” based on
participatory democracy, community councils and workers’ control of industry, has
been answered by the people.

Venezuela’s workers and urban poor have mobilised to combat
corporate control with people’s power.

Coral Wynter lived and worked in Venezuela , as a journalist for
Australia’s Green Left Weekly newspaper.

Listen to her presentation about this exciting struggle to build a
society where people are more important than profits HERE.

Venezuelan Workers Demand Nationalization of SIDOR Steel Plant

2007-05-09T20:19:00.000-07:00

Venezuelan Workers Demand Nationalization of SIDOR Steel Plant
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
By: Chris Carlson - Venezuelanalysis. com

Mérida, May 9, 2007 (venezuelanalysis. com)— Workers held protests
outside the SIDOR steel plant in Puerto Ordaz yesterday, demanding
that the government nationalize the company. Last Thursday, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez had warned that he would nationalize the
Argentinian- owned company if they didn't meet the needs of domestic
industry instead of exporting to foreign customers. It appears,
however, that the government has reached an agreement with the company
today, allowing the company to remain in private hands.

Workers belonging to the labor union of SIDOR workers gathered outside
the plant yesterday, blocking traffic of a nearby road. According to
an official of the labor union, workers did not allow entry to the
plant starting in the early morning hours.

"As workers we are demanding a definitive answer to the situation,"
said Ulmaro Ramos, secretary of the union, on a local radio station. A
spokesperson for the union stated that the workers are in favor of the
president's intention to nationalize the company.

"We are supporting the president's announcement about the possibility
to liberate the company which has been subjected to slavery of
neo-liberal capitalism for the last 8 years," said José Meléndez,
member of the union organization Alianza Sindical de Sidor. Meléndez
said that when the plant was privatized there were 11,600 employees
and that now there are only 5,700 workers who are "exploited and
without any kind of benefits."

Another union, Unidad Matancer, of the political party Causa R
demanded that the government take the nationalization even further and
give the majority of the company shares to the workers of the plant.

"We are not divided and we completely agree that the president should
acquire the control of this company so that it can eventually be
passed on to the control of the workers," said Meléndez.

SIDOR is the largest steel plant in the Andean region with a capacity
of 4.2 million tons annually. The company was state property since its
formation in 1962 until 1998 when it was privatized. 60 percent of the
shares were acquired by a consortium named Amazonia, made up by the
Argentinean firm Techint as a majority partner, as well as the Mexican
Hylsamex, the Brazilian Uniminas, and the Venezuelan company Sivensa
as minority partners. The Venezuelan government retained 20 percent of
the shares and the remaining 20 percent were given to the workers of
the plant.

SIDOR produces wire and pipes, including the kind of pipe that the
Venezuelan national industry needs, and according to company reports,
63 percent of the production is directed to the Venezuelan market and
37 percent to exports.

The government, however, maintains that they have to import the piping
that they need for the oil industry from as far off as China. Chávez
warned SIDOR last week that if they did not supply the domestic market
with the needed products, that he would put in place a law to require
them to supply all Venezuelan demand before exporting any production.

"I have made the order to call Mr. Paolo Rocca (president of Techint)
and I'm going to tell him: We are going to make a law, because you
have to guarantee to me first, before exporting a single ton of steel,
that all the Venezuelan processing companies are supplied," said
Chávez in his televised address last Thursday.

Chávez went on to say that if the president of the private company did
not agree then he would nationalize the company and the state would
take control of it.

It appears, however, that the Venezuelan government and the
Argentinean company Techint may have come to an agreement today.
According to initial reports, the company has agreed to the conditions
demanded by the Venezuelan government. Those conditions include:

* Lowering the prices for the domestic market between 15 and 20
percent
* Switching production more toward the domestic market in order to
substitute imports
* Paying a higher price for the iron used in the steel plant than
it receives from the state-owned company Ferrominera.

The private steel plant receives the raw material it uses in steel
production from a state-owned iron mining company that has, over the
last 8 years, sold iron to the private company at a subsidized rate.
The agreement with the private company should be finalized by next
week when the president of the company, Paolo Rocca, is expected to
travel to Caracas to sign the final document.

May Day statement by central committee of Socialist Worker-New Zealand

2007-05-06T15:11:00.000-07:00

Venezuela's deepening revolution & international socialist coordination

Central committee of Socialist Worker-New Zealand

1 May 2007

This May Day statement by the central committee of Socialist Worker-New Zealand takes up an invitation from Alex Callinicos, a leader of the British Socialist Workers Party, to respond to his proposal (27 September 2006) that the International Socialist Tendency (IST) adopt a new "Coordination" structure.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand has been an affiliate of the IST since 1995. We believe that the question of an IST Coordination demands that the whole IST first comes to a consensus on the global political context and critical global tasks of the IST, since questions of organisation and politics cannot be separated.

GLOBAL POLITICAL CONTEXT

Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes that key elements of the global political context include:

* Huge turmoil and rivalries within global imperialism, which is driving the US state's global war to maintain its position relative to rival powers, chiefly China, the European Union and Russia.

* The weakening of the US state's ability to assert its will by military force as a result of the heroic resistance of Iraqi people to the imperialist occupation of their country.

* Massive grassroots opposition around the world to the Iraq war, which in some countries has seen large anti-war movements emerge. If Iran is attacked, there will likely be an explosion of the anti-war movement onto the streets.

* Heightened grassroots concern about planetary environmental chaos, due to the climate change issue "bursting through" into the mainstream.

* Neo-liberalism facing growing political opposition, which is currently the most advanced across Latin America.

* Signs of rising worker unrest and unionisation across some countries.

* The deepening revolutionary process in Venezuela, marked by the "left turn" of Hugo Chavez in parallel with his re-election as president on 3 December 2006.

VENEZUELA'S REVOLUTION IS GLOBALLY SIGNIFICANT

Socialist Worker-New Zealand regards the unfolding revolution in Venezuela as of epochal significance.

With the US military bogged down in Iraq, there is more space for Venezuela's socialist Chavistas to seriously challenge capitalism right on Washington's doorstep.

This challenge has profound implications for the world's socialists. The deepening revolution in Venezuela is an historic opportunity for socialists everywhere to spotlight a real-life alternative to capitalism's inequality, eco-chaos and war.

Is the unfolding Venezuelan revolution the most important leap forward for the workers' cause since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution? The answer from delegates at Socialist Worker-New Zealand's recent national conference was a unanimous "yes".

The masses in Venezuela are behind a genuine revolutionary project in a way that has not occurred in the last 90 years. While nothing is certain, this could well create the mass impetus for a huge revival in the international revolutionary socialist movement.

It is the world historic significance of events in Venezuela, and the implications for IST coordination and direction, that is the focus of this Socialist Worker-New Zealand statement.

POLITICAL SITUATION IN VENEZUELA

Socialist Worker-New Zealand offers this summary analysis of the political situation in Venezuela:

* There is, at present, a dual power scenario in Venezuela where opposing class forces are "balanced out". While this state of affairs has lasted for quite a while, it is inherently unstable and cannot last forever. Either one class coalition or the other will win the war over whether Venezuela will move beyond capitalism to socialism. In this war the impact of global events will play a pivotal role, since the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union in the 1920s showed that "socialism in one country" cannot forever withstand the pressures of world capitalism.

* A huge proportion of Venezuela's population are actively involved in the revolutionary process. The role of the grassroots masses was decisive in beating back the right-wing military coup of 2002 and restoring the elected Chavista government. In the presidential election of December 2006 Hugo Chavez, who campaigned on an openly socialist platform, received 63% of the vote (7.3 million people). Over the week before polling day, 2.5 million people in Caracas, half the capital's entire population, took to the streets to support Chavez against counter-revolutionary provocations.

* The masses and the leaders of the Bolivarian Revolution are having to confront fundamental issues about what socialism is and how it can be won. In particular, the question of state power is being debated on a mass scale: Can the existing capitalist state be bent to a new popular will? Or must new organs of grassroots power be created to confront the pro-capitalist bureaucracy and the economic power of the capitalist class? Increasingly the answer is being seen in the practical construction of alternative structures of popular power.

POSITIVE INITIATIVES FROM THE LEADERSHIP

Chavez & Co, who are the established leaders of the revolution, have learnt a lot since the former army officer was first elected president in 1998. Crucially they have learnt from the actions of the masses of people, who in turn have been inspired by Chavista leaders who are calling for "socialism in the 21st century".

Both the leadership and the masses have learnt by having to counter the military coups, economic sabotage and propaganda warfare of pro-capitalist forces. When you are engaged in open battle, you either learn very quickly or you lose.

Early in 2005 Chavez spoke of how he had once believed in a "third way", which he described as trying to "put a mask" on the capitalist beast, but this had been "smashed by reality" and he was now a socialist. Over the last six months Chavez has moved further towards revolutionary conclusions, calling himself a Trotskyist and proclaiming "permanent revolution". He has made repeated calls for the "dismantling of the bourgeois state" in order to build socialism in Venezuela.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand recognises the very positive initiatives coming from Chavez & Co to push beyond dual power towards socialism. Chavez calls this process a "revolution within the revolution". These initiatives include:

COMMUNAL COUNCILS

The expansion of communal councils (currently numbering 19,000) across all of Venezuela is encouraging mass participatory democracy and drawing more grassroots people into the revolutionary process.

The communal councils are a positive move to empower the urban poor -- the casualised workers and petty traders in the cities who make up over half of Venezuela's total population. While these councils are not the same as the workers' soviets of 1917 Russia, they are vital in a land where the majority of people live in cities but do not have permanent jobs, let alone belong to unions.

The communal councils possibly have more in common with the poor peasants' committees which the Bolsheviks tried (but failed) to establish as an emancipatory vehicle for Russia's masses of rural workers and poor peasants. The big difference is that the Bolsheviks' poor peasants committees' were set up in the countryside, where their dispersal over huge areas made them unequal to the pressures of class enemies, while the Chavistas' communal councils have arisen in the cities, where a mass concentration of the urban poor and their proximity to organised workers gives them every chance of displacing capitalism's organs of political power.

SOCIAL MISSIONS

The popular social missions, directly funded by nationalised oil revenues, have been improving the living conditions of Venezuela's poor.

And the education, health, social welfare and co-operative missions, all relying on armies of volunteers, have begun to establish new lines of power. Chavez put it this way in June 2006:

"The social missions became the instruments of constructing socialism. But they are not socialism itself. They are weapons in the construction of socialism, aimed to include everybody, to establish and to practice equality."

CHALLENGING THE MARKET

Venezuela remains a capitalist economy, and capital is still flowing into the country seeking profits. But the Chavez government has introduced measures that are challenging the rule of capital. These include:

* Pushing forward with the nationalisation of oil processing, as well as the planned nationalisation of telecom and power companies.
* Government redistribution of wealth from state-owned oil to the poor of Venezuela.
Major increases in the minimum wage.
* Tightening up tax regulations so the rich cannot evade taxes.
* Imposition of maximum prices for basic foodstuffs.
* Moves to repeal the independence of Venezuela's neo-liberal Central Bank.

UNITED SOCIALIST PARTY OF VENEZUELA

To move beyond dual power towards socialism demands a mass socialist party that educates, unites and organises grassroots people around the struggle for liberation from below.

Chavez sparked the formation of a United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which he compares to Lenin's Bolshevik Party.

The process of forming this "combat party" is already sharpening the differences between revolutionaries and reformists, which had been submerged by the previous ill-defined grouping of parties "supporting" Chavez. Those parties have all been given the option of either dissolving into the new mass socialist party or remaining outside the Chavista government.

It would be utopian to think that the PSUV could be an instantly homogenous party of revolutionaries. It will, however, be a mass socialist party with organic connections to grassroots people who support the unfolding revolution. The process of building the PSUV will challenge the reformist wing of the Bolivarian movement and precipitate a "battle of ideas" in which the masses will participate.

While the initiative for the PSUV came from Chavez, it will be built "from below". Socialist militants, who played a key role in mobilising the Chavista vote during the 2006 presidential election, have become the "promoters" of the new mass socialist party. They are going out to the people to register members, who will be organised into "socialist battalions" of 200 people each. The aim is to organise 20,000 of these "battalions" across Venezuela, from which delegates will be elected to attend the PSUV's founding conference in August 2007.

The conference will run for three or more months, with regular breaks so that delegates can return to their own "battalion" to discuss proposals and come back with a refreshed mandate from below.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes the PSUV is vital to educate, unite and organise the grassroots masses in Venezuela so they can push forward the socialist revolution.

Just as Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes all revolutionaries inside Venezuela need to join this mass socialist party, so too we believe that revolutionary groups in other countries need to establish comradely relations with the PSUV.

In combination, the communal councils, social missions, challenges to the market, formation of the PSUV and other emancipatory initiatives by Chavez & Co form a transitional mechanism by which the grassroots people of Venezuela can move towards the socialist defeat of counter-revolutionary forces. Trotsky's transitional programme lives on inside Venezuela as the concept of liberation from below gains concrete mass form.

A WEAKNESS IN THE REVOLUTION

The future of Venezuela's unfolding revolution is closely linked to the growth and mobilisation of unionised workers, who at present are only a tiny number compared to city-based casualised workers and petty traders, easily the biggest population groups in the country.

The small scale of Venezuela's unionised workers is a weakness in the revolution that cannot be easily overcome. This weakness is compounded by a debilitating political split in the major union centre, the National Union of Workers (UNT). These social and political factors are hindering organised workers from speeding up the revolutionary process.

This weakness is recognised by the Chavista government. Chavez has often spoken of the need for the UNT and the organised workers to take a leading role in the revolution. Workers have been encouraged to take control of factories and create workers' councils. Some small but positive advances in this direction have been taken.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes that the PSUV will be crucial to pulling unionised workers into the forefront of the revolution. That was certainly the role Lenin's Bolsheviks played among the small sector of unionised workers in pre-revolutionary Russia.

ENGAGEMENT WITH THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION

While Chavez & Co started from a radical reformist viewpoint, the unfolding class struggle has pushed them towards a socialist perspective which is now assuming ever-sharper mass revolutionary features.

Obviously nobody can say for sure whether the Venezuelan revolution will win out. But right ow Chavez & Co are moving in a consistently socialist direction as they seek to overcome capitalism. In the process, they are confronting many problems unique to Venezuela and thus coming up with solutions not seen before in socialist history, such as the major role of communal councils in a land where far more city dwellers work in the "informal" economy than in corporate or state entities.

Venezuela's unfolding revolution is drawing massive support from grassroots people across Latin America, which is fueling a continental revolt against neo-liberal economics and US imperial domination. In Ecuador and Bolivia, presidents have recently been elected on the back of explicitly socialist challenges to corporate rule.

These are exciting times. Socialism is being seriously talked about and acted upon by millions of people inspired by Chavez and the "revolution within the revolution" in Venezuela.

Socialists worldwide should be enthusiastic about the Bolivarian Revolution. Socialists worldwide need to engage with the revolution's leaders, who will be in the PSUV, so there can be a reciprocity of ideas that promotes the global struggle for grassroots self-emancipation. Thus Socialist Worker-New Zealand is looking to forge practical links with our PSUV comrades in a land where socialism is well on the way to becoming a determining force.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand and a broad range of other leftists have formed the Venezuela Aotearoa Solidarity Team (VAST). We want to bring awareness of Venezuela's revolution to the working class in this country. We want to build a solidarity coalition able to effectively oppose any intervention in Venezuela by the US state and its foreign allies.

In our socialist work in broad coalitions, such as the anti-war, anti-Islamophobic and climate change movements, we are pointing to Venezuela as a positive alternative to imperialism, oppression and eco-meltdown.

ALEX'S PROPOSALS FOR IST COORDINATION

It is within the context of the deepening revolution in Venezuela that Socialist Worker-New Zealand responds to Alex Callinicos's proposal to create an IST "Coordination". Alex defines such a Coordination as consisting of "selected organisations" whose leaderships would consult and meet between annual IST gatherings "to deal with initiatives, problems, etc".

Socialist Worker-New Zealand has two substantive concerns with this Coordination proposal. First, it is not intimately linked to the global political situation, and in particular to how the IST needs to engage with the mass revolutionary process in Venezuela. Instead, the proposal is couched in terms of the IST's own internal processes.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes the unfolding Venezuelan revolution, if it continues to move in the direction it's currently going, will reshape the socialist and labour movements in every country on every continent, just as the unfolding Bolshevik revolution did from 1917-24. Therefore, rather than looking inwards, the IST needs to be focused outwards towards the most advanced revolutionary upsurge in 90 years and the global socialist regroupments it will inevitably set into motion.

At present, there seem to be real differences between IST affiliates over the nature of what is happening in Venezuela. At one end of the IST spectrum, Socialist Worker-New Zealand see Chavez & Co as being at the centre of the most important "revolution in the revolution" since the Bolsheviks proclaimed "All power to the Soviets" in 1917 Russia. At the other end of the IST spectrum, the Venezuelan revolution was a "non-topic" in the official discussion bulletins of the British Socialist Workers Party in the lead-up to their national conference in January 2007.

So how do we form an IST Coordination when the IST appears to lack real political coordination over the key strategic issue of Venezuela's revolution? If we were to do it just on the basis of IST tactical organisation, any such IST Coordination would be a sham from the outset.

The deepening Venezuelan revolution has sparked intense discussions among the world's different Marxist organisations about what makes a revolution, how to move towards socialism, what is the dialectic between the leaders and the masses, how to establish workers' control and other strategic questions.

We all have a lot to learn from the world historic events in Venezuela. We cannot assume that any one Marxist group has readymade answers to everything. Any IST Coordination, therefore, must be based on facilitating this global debate among all Marxist groups, most of them outside the IST, in tandem with fusing the IST into a strategic engagement with the PSUV's leaders.

It's a global debate about the Venezuelan revolution that the IST needs to start coordinating, and that requires democratic input from all IST affiliates around the world.

That brings us to our second substantive concern. The IST Coordination proposal calls for unspecified powers to be granted to "selected" organisations. Any such "selection" would leave non-selected IST groups on the margins of IST decision-making, given the tyranny of distance over a global coalition like the IST. It would fix the bureaucratic curse of the initiating "centre" and the non-initiating "periphery" onto the IST.

Why can't every IST affiliate have one representative on the IST Coordination? With modern communications technology, face-to-face meetings in London can be replaced by extremely cheap "virtual" meetings that link all continents. The material basis already exists for an all-in IST Coordination that interacts on a global scale as frequently as needed. The real question is whether the IST has the political consensus and the political will to bring it about.

SOCIALIST WORKER-NEW ZEALAND'S PROPOSALS

In the opinion of Socialist Worker-New Zealand, it is urgent and critical for the IST to relate to the revolutionary process in Venezuela and the opportunities it is creating for socialists worldwide.

To move in this direction, Socialist Worker-New Zealand makes three concrete proposals:

(1) As many Spanish-speaking IST comrades as possible to attend the three-month founding conference of the PSUV starting in August 2007.

(2) In consultation with PSUV leaders and Marxists from other countries attending the PSUV conference, the Spanish-speaking IST attendees to initiate a global debate about the nature, strategies and prospects of the Venezuelan revolution.

(3) To help coordinate this global debate about the Venezuelan revolution, an IST Coordination be created consisting of one delegate from every IST group and relying on modern technology to hold all-in "virtual" meetings as required.

FOUNDATIONS FOR MASS SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL

The failure of US forces in Iraq has opened up more space for the world's socialists to operate. In Venezuela, for the first time since Lenin's Bolsheviks, we are seeing a mass movement well on the way towards establishing socialism within the borders of a whole country. The front line of the epochal war between capitalism and socialism is now in Venezuela.

Even where there has been resistance to the neo-liberal offensive over the last two decades, the international workers' movement has been floundering on the widespread assumption that "there is no alternative". The Venezuelan revolution is putting socialism back on the agenda in a practical and living way -- the way most people will come to socialism. The IST must be an organic part of this process.

Any IST Coordination needs to be focused on relating to forces outside the IST. That's because the forward movement of the Venezuelan revolution and the wider Latin American uprisings look likely to provide the essential material foundations for a positive regroupment of the socialist and radical left on every continent, and the parallel emergence of a mass socialist international.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes the political and organisational decisions made within the IST must reflect this historic opportunity to move towards a mass socialist international. This is the first time since the early days of the Comintern that such a possibility has existed.

This requires the IST to directly engage with PSUV leaders in the building of a mass socialist international. The IST can play a positive role in this process if we make that turn now.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand invites feedback from IST affiliates and other socialist organisations. Please send your comments to:

Central committee, Socialist Worker-New Zealand, PO Box 13-685,Auckland, New Zealand.

socialist-worker@pl.net

+64 9 634 3984

Solidarity,

Central committee of Socialist Worker-New Zealand

SIGNED BY

* Don Archer
* Grant Brookes
* Joe Carolan
* Gordon Farris
* Vaughan Gunson
* Bernie Hornfeck
* Peter Hughes
* Daphne Lawless
* Grant Morgan
* Len Parker
* Tony Snelling-Berg

Chavez recommends the study of Trotsky, praises The Transitional Programme

2007-04-27T03:06:00.000-07:00

Chavez recommends the study of Trotsky, praises The Transitional Programme

http://www.marxist. com/chavez- transitional- programme. htm

By Jorge Martin Thursday, 26 April 2007

In his weekly TV programme Aló Presidente, broadcast on Sunday April 22 from Urachiche in Yaracuy, president Chávez advised all Venezuelans to read and study the writings of Leon Trotsky, and commented favourably on The Transitional Programme, which was written by Trotsky for the founding congress of the Fourth International in 1938.

Responding to a call from a listener of the programme, Ramon Gonzalez, Chávez explained that he had recently read the pamphlet which had been given to him by the Minister of Popular Power for Labour and Social Security, José Ramón Rivero. The minister is a former trade unionist from Bolivar who had told Chávez he was a Trotskyist when hearing of his intention to nominate him as minister of Labour.

"I cannot be classified as a Trotskyist, no, but I tend towards that, because I respect very much the thoughts of Leon Trotsky, and the more I respect him the more I understand him better. The permanent revolution for instance, is an extremely important thesis. We must read, we must study, all of us, nobody here can think he already knows", he stressed.

Chávez underlined Trotsky's idea about the conditions for socialism being ripe and said that this is certainly the case in Venezuela. "Leon Trotsky, in a pamphlet which I did not bring, I wanted to bring it but I forgot it. Well, I was reading it early in the morning, is the theory of transition, it is a short booklet, no more than 30, 40 pages, but it is worth its weight in gold, an extremely enlightening writer, Leon Trotsky. Then he says, when you talk Ramón, Rafael Ramón González Ramírez, from Valera, he is telling us in his call that in Venezuela the conditions are given for us to be a country, but a socialist country, a prosperous socialist country, socialistically developed, because when we talk about development we must be careful. Venezuela is going to be a developed country! Well, we must be careful, because it is not a question of copying the model from the North, that model is destroying the world, my friend, that is why I use this term that has just occurred
to me: socialistically developed, environmentally developed", he said.

President Chávez said he had been struck by Trotsky's statement that in Europe and other countries, the conditions for proletarian revolution were only ripe but have started to rot.

"Trotsky in this pamphlet, written at that time, between the two wars, after the First World War and with the Second World War about to break out, in the 1930s, ... What year was Trotsky assassinated? Nobody remembers? Well, that's homework for all of you present. Then he says, Rafael, that the conditions, according to his criteria at that time, that in Europe and other developed countries in the North, the conditions for proletarian revolution were not only ripe, but had started to rot, because what matures can also rot, this happens, it can happen. This expression struck me in a powerful way, Maria Cristina [Minister of Popular Power for Light Industry and Commerce], because I had never read it before, what this means is that the conditions can be there, but if we do not see them, if we do not understand them, if we are not able to seize the moment they start to rot, like any other product of the Earth, a mango, etc."

And then Chávez referred also to the central thesis of Trotsky's Transitional Programme, when he explained that "the historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership."

"Then", Chávez continued, "Trotsky points out something which is extremely important, and he says that [the conditions for proletarian revolution] are starting to rot, not because of the workers, but because of the leadership which did not see, which did not know, which was cowardly, which subordinated itself to the mandates of capitalism, of the great bourgeois democracies, the trade unions. Well, they became adapted to the system, the big Communist parties, the Communist International became adapted to the system, and then no one was able to take advantage, because of the lack of a leadership, of an intelligent, audacious and timely leadership to orient the popular offensive in those conditions. And then the Second World War came and we know what happened, and after the Second World War, and then the century ended with the fall of the Soviet Union and the fall of the so-called ‘real-existing' socialism".
This is a world apart from those who argue that there cannot be socialism in Venezuela because the level of consciousness of the workers "is not high enough". And, surprising though this might be, there are people even in Venezuela who argue precisely this. Chávez's words are also an attack against the leaders of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) who have refused to join the new United Socialist Party. The leaders of the PCV, a party that contains many honest and courageous working class militants, has played a lamentable role during the Bolivarian revolution. Instead of being a vanguard party, arguing from the beginning that socialism was the only way forward, they did precisely the opposite. They spent the first years of the revolution arguing strenuously that the Venezuelan revolution was just in its "anti-imperialist democratic phase" and that socialism was not on the agenda. Only when Chávez spoke about socialism did the PCV dare mention the S word. And even
now, they are still insisting that the current "stage" is that of "national liberation", one which demands a "many sided alliance of classes and social layers, including the non-monopolistic bourgeoisie" !!! (from the Theses of the XIII Congress, 2007).

Since Chávez started talking about socialism in January 2005, this has become a major subject of debate in all corners of Venezuela. Chavez's statement that under capitalism there was no solution for the problems of the masses and that the road forward was socialism represented a major step forward in his political development. He had started trying to reform the system and to give the masses of the Venezuelan poor decent health and education services and land, and he had realised through his own experience and reading that this was not possible under capitalism.

But as soon as he mentioned socialism the reformists, bureaucrats and counter-revolutiona ry infiltrators within the Bolivarian movement panicked. They could not openly and publicly contradict the president because his words connected with the feelings and aspirations of the masses. Rather, they tried to water down the content of what he had said. Chief amongst these is Heinz Dieterich who has tried to develop a "theoretical" justification against socialism, but dressing it in the robes of "Socialism of the 21st century". Basically, he argues, socialism does not mean the expropriation of the means of production, but rather a mixed economy. That is to say, socialism, for Dieterich, really means .... capitalism. Like a magician, Dieterich thinks he can take Chávez's declaration in favour of socialism, put it in a hat, and pull out a capitalist rabbit.

However Chávez is very clear on what he thinks. In the last few months he has become increasingly impatient at the delaying tactics of the bureaucracy and the counter-revolution within the movement. He has made clear that when he talks of building socialism, he is talking about doing it now, not in the long distant future. In his comments about Trotsky he stressed the point:

"Well, here the conditions are given, I think that this thought or reflection of Trotsky is useful for the moment we are living through, here the conditions are given, in Venezuela and Latin America, I am not going to comment on Europe now, nor on Asia, there the reality is another, another rhythm, another dynamic, but in Latin America conditions are given, and in Venezuela this is a matter of course, to carry out a genuine revolution".

What a difference from the reformists and the Stalinists, who, even in present day Venezuela, still argue that the conditions are not ripe for revolution!

The December 2006 presidential elections marked yet another turn to the left in the Bolivarian revolution. The right wing of the Bolivarian movement is getting increasingly worried about the course events are taking, with Chávez talking of Trotskyism in the swearing in ceremony for the new Cabinet, and adopting an increasingly leftward course. The battle lines are drawn and the splits within the Bolivarian movement have become public and they have expressed themselves in the polemic about the founding of the new party.

Chávez is acutely aware of this and in the first meeting of promoters of the new United Socialist Party, on March 24th, he explained how "as the revolution deepens, as it expands, these contradictions will come out openly, even some that up until now had been covered up, they will intensify, because we are dealing here with economic issues, and there is nothing that hurts a capitalist more than his wallet".

Leading figures in some of the Bolivarian parties (particularly PODEMOS and the PPT, but also the PCV) have refused to join in the new United Socialist Party. The reason for this is clear, they fear this new party, they fear the breath of the revolutionary masses behind their neck, they fear all this talk of socialism. At a recent meeting on April 19th, where 16,000 promoters of the PSUV were sworn in, Chávez attacked a number of PODEMOS governors openly. "As far as I am concerned he has taken the mask off and joined the opposition" he said of Ramon Martinez, PODEMOS governor of Sucre. To Martinez's statement that he was in favour of a "democratic socialism", Chávez replied that the problem was that "I am a socialist and he is a social-democrat" , and he added, "I am in favour of revolutionary socialism".

In talking about the need for a revolutionary leadership Chávez also quoted from Lenin:

"Now, the leadership, this is why I insist so much in the need for a party, because we have not had a revolutionary leadership up to the tasks of the moment we are living in, united, orientated as a result of a strategy, united, as Vladimir Illich Lenin said, a machinery able to articulate millions of wills into one single will[1], this is indispensable to carry out a revolution, otherwise it is lost, like the rivers that overflow, like the Yaracuy that when it reaches the Caribbean loses its riverbed and becomes a swamp".

The political thinking of Chavez is in tune and reflects the conclusions drawn by tens of thousands of revolutionary activists in Venezuela, in the factories, in the neighbourhoods, in the countryside. They are growing increasingly impatient and want to the revolution to be victorious once and for all.

Sanitarios Maracay

The recent events in which Sanitarios Maracay workers' were arrested and beaten up when they were on their way to a march in Caracas in defence of workers' control and expropriation exemplify in a nut-shell the contradictions and dangers facing the Venezuelan revolution. The workers have occupied the factory and have been producing under workers' control for nearly 5 months, and demand the expropriation under workers' control. They have organised a factory committee to run the company and organise the struggle. This is exactly the practical application of what Trotsky talks about in the Transitional Programme.

"Sit-down [occupation] strikes, ..., go beyond the limits of "normal" capitalist procedure. Independently of the demands of the strikers, the temporary seizure of factories deals a blow to the idol, capitalist property. Every sit-down strike poses in a practical manner the question of who is boss of the factory: the capitalist or the workers? If the sit-down strike raises this question episodically, the factory committee gives it organized expression. Elected by all the factory employees, the factory committee immediately creates a counterweight to the will of the administration. "

This is precisely what happened at Sanitarios Maracay and it was the intervention of the comrades of the Revolutionary Marxist Current, through the Revolutionary Front of Occupied Factories (FRETECO) that help the workers draw the last conclusions of their own experience. Contrary to what some left wing trade union leaders are arguing in Venezuela, the role of trade unions in revolutionary times is not simply to conduct the day to day struggle for immediate demands on wages and conditions, but rather to elevate the workers to the idea of taking power. As Trotsky explains in the Transitional Programme: "Trade unions are not ends in themselves; they are but means along the road to proletarian revolution." , and he adds "during a period of exceptional upsurges in the labor movement ... it is necessary to create organizations ad hoc, embracing the whole fighting mass: strike committees, factory committees, and finally, soviets."

If the trade union leaders in Venezuela were to wage a serious campaign of factory occupations in which the workers demanded that the bosses "open up their books" (one of the demands raised by the Transitional Programme) and subsequently argue for expropriation under workers' control, the question of power would be posed automatically. This is precisely what the CMR has been arguing in Venezuela as opposed to those who put at the centre of their programme the question of elections within the UNT.

On the other hand, the arrest and repression against Sanitarios Maracay workers' raises another very important issue, which Trotsky also raised in the Transitional Programme in the conditions of Europe in the 1930s: the question of arming the workers and peasants. In Venezuela we have a situation where the old state apparatus, though weakened, is still in place. The governor of Aragua (a counter-revolutiona ry disguised as a Bolivarian) is able to use the police to attack the workers, and the National Guard acted on the side of the police.

This serves to underline the point that the Marxists have always stressed: the workers cannot take the ready-made state machinery and use it for their own purposes. In Venezuela the question of the arming of the workers and peasants and setting up of peoples' militias (that the Transitional Programme talks about) is a crucial one, and one that could be carried out quite simply. If the workers were to join the reserve force and territorial guard, in an organised way factory by factory, this would go a long way in creating a peoples' militia under the control of the workers.

The tasks ahead

Above all, the Sanitarios Maracay incident shows how dangerous the situation is. The counter-revolution is becoming increasingly alarmed at the leftward course of the revolution. They are sabotaging any experience of workers' control (including using delaying tactics in order to bankrupt Inveval, which is also under workers' control, see Venezuela: Inveval Workers protest in front of the Miraflores Palace ). In the recent months they have also tried again to sabotage the economy by creating scarcity of basic foodstuffs, and now they are preparing to mobilise on the streets around May27th when the broadcasting licence for RCTV (the opposition TV channel which participated in the organisation of the coup) will not be renewed.

The way forward is to expropriate the oligarchy and build a new revolutionary state based on factory and neighbourhood committees. In order to carry this out a revolutionary party and a revolutionary leadership are needed. This is why all revolutionaries should be part of the new United Socialist Party, accompanying the masses in their experience and raising in it the ideas of Trotsky, the ideas of Marxism, which provide the most accurate guide for the victorious completion of the revolution. This is exactly what the comrades of the Revolutionary Marxist Current, with their limited forces, are doing and we appeal to all genuine revolutionary socialists in Venezuela to join them.

------------ --------- --------- ---
[1] From Lenin's "The Tasks of the Youth Leagues" http://marxists. org/archive/ lenin/works/ 1920/oct/ 02.htm

Venezuela’s revolution accelerates

2007-04-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

Venezuela’s revolution accelerates

Federico Fuentes, Caracas

19 April 2007

Returning once again to Venezuela — having last spent four months here in 2005 — I recalled a refrain that had been constantly repeated by Venezuelans: “After we re-elect Chavez in 2006, the real revolution will begin.” It took very little time for me to realise exactly what they meant.

I arrived on the eve of the fifth anniversary of those historic events that shook Venezuela from April 11-13 in 2002 — a US-backed coup that was overturned by a subsequent mass uprising of the poor in alliance with the majority of the armed forces. Across all of Caracas, banners and billboards carried the slogan that summarised what had occurred on those fateful days: “Every 11 has its 13 — From oligarchic counter-revolution to civic-military revolution”. Throughout the city, numerous screens had been set up to play video footage of the massive rebellion that reversed the coup — which was aimed at putting an end to the Bolivarian process and protecting the interests of the wealthy elite — and reinstated President Hugo Chavez. State television played documentaries through the three days, detailing the events surrounding the coup and subsequent uprising.

On the streets, everyone was remembering what it was that they did during those days. It was impossible to miss the upbeat feeling among the people on April 13, as hundreds, and then thousands, began to congregate outside the presidential palace, just as they had five years ago, to await their president.

Speaking in front an estimated million-strong demonstration, Chavez recalled the events that led up to the coup attempt, pointing out that it had acted as a “trigger”, pushing the process towards “an anti-imperialist revolution, because we know from where [these events] were led and planned from, the US”.

Now five years on, Chavez called on the Venezuelan people to “radicalise” the revolution towards the “new socialism of the 21st century”, to thunderous applause and chants of approval.

Throughout most of 2005 and 2006, the Venezuelan government focused its attention on consolidating its support internally and internationally. On the domestic front the government paid particular attention to strengthening the social missions, in order to attack poverty and organise the population.

In the international arena, Chavez travelled the world, seeking support for his government in the face of continued US hostility and Washington’s attempts to isolate Venezuela diplomatically. Throughout the Third World, the Venezuelan government signed trade agreements, deepening both economic and social ties as part of a campaign to create an international anti-imperialist alliance.

By trading not just in dollars and petroleum, but in human capital, providing — jointly with revolutionary Cuba in many cases — education and health programs, and though Chavez’s defiant and outspoken stance, such his denouncement of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the Bolivarian revolution has captured the hearts and minds of millions across the world.

This has helped provide the space for a rapid accelerating of the Bolivarian revolution, and with it an opening up of a period of definition of the process’s goals and line of march. In the economic sphere, Chavez told the April 12 rally, the government has “no plan to eradicate private property in Venezuela, as long as it subordinates itself to the national interest and the socialist project”. If it didn’t, then it was “condemned to progressively disappear”.

He added, however, that the government’s emphasis would be in working with “new forms of property, social property … collective property … co-management, self-management”. It would encourage “direct or indirect social property via the companies of social property, of social production, and many other mechanisms that we are designing”.

The first morning here I attended a meeting called by one of the currents in the National Union of Workers (UNT) to discuss the formation of Bolivarian Councils of Workers, more commonly dubbed workers’ councils. Describing the nature of the discussion over these councils, Marcela Maspero, a national coordinator of the UNT, said that the councils had to be “political organisations of the working class, based on direct democracy and control over production”.

They had to play the role of “eradicating capitalist exploitation, and transforming relations of production in order to create socialised ownership over the means of production”. Although these councils have only just begun to appear in a handful of companies, an intense debate at both the governmental and grassroots levels is unfolding over their nature and role.

In the social sphere, Chavez has called for “an explosion in communal power”, urging the rapid construction of Communal Councils. These councils are based on the coming together of 200-400 families in urban areas, even less in rural areas, in order to plan and execute projects for the benefit of the community. In some areas, this has already progressed to the point where discussions have begun on the need to establish federations of Communal Councils, in order to tackle larger projects. There are now more than 19,000 Coimmunal Councils. In essence, the aim of the Communal Councils is for power to reside in the communities. This has led to some cases where these councils have come into conflict with the existing state structures, where those who currently hold power fear losing it — a constant battle the revolution encounters as it comes up against the structures of the old state bureaucracy.

Perhaps most importantly, Chavez stated in his speech on April 13 that the revolution once again called on the Venezuelan people to participate in the formation of the new united socialist party. Stating that to date the revolution “hasn’t had real parties”, he referred to the construction of the new party as “the greatest necessity of this revolution”.

On April 19, 16,000 promoters of the new party were initiated. Their task is to agitate for, and involve the communities in, the construction of the party, which organisers estimate will bring together 4-5 million people.

Chavez’s call has opened up a big debate on what the nature and program of such a party should be. For now, apart from Chavez’s party, the Movement for a Fifth Republic (MVR), the main Chavista parties have decided not to dissolve into the new party. However, large fractures have begun to occur as both leaders and rank-and-file members of these parties — Homeland For All (PPT), Podemos and the Venezuelan Communist Party — are leaving en masse. Most of the parties outside of the official Chavista electoral alliance but committed to the revolution have decided to integrate themselves into the new party, with a few waiting on the sidelines to see how things unfold first.

The party will be established along democratic lines, from the bottom up. For several weeks from April 29, 6000 booths will be set up all over the country for people to sign up to the new party. Next, the new joiners will be divided up into basic cells of 200 people based on territorial divisions, universities and factories. Out of each, a spokesperson will be elected to participate in the founding congress. No quotas have been set aside for party officials, nor will anyone automatically secure a place in the congress. Even Chavez will have to be elected by his local cell if he is to participate in the conference.

The founding conference will run for approximately three months. As the congress deliberates, spokespeople will return to their local cell, back to the congress, then back to the community and so on. On December 2, a referendum of all members will decide whether or not to approve the founding program of the new party. To ensure transparency and democracy, the national electoral commission will run the whole process.

It will be a truly democratic and participatory process, never seen before on this scale, with the aim of drawing together the real leaders from the communities into a process of discussion and debate aimed at driving the process forward.

Without doubt, the more this revolution deepens the more desperate the opposition will become. At the same time as Chavez was giving his speech, a small explosive was detonated in the building that houses the legislative council of the state of Miranda. This followed two other explosions in shopping centres earlier that week. Although no-one was killed, the intent was clear.

May 28 is the expiration day of RCTV’s license, a television station that openly participated in the 2002 coup plot. While the government never shut it down, it has decided to hand RCTV’s license over to community media as part of a program of expanding access to media. Chavez warned that the government had reliable information that the opposition had begun a destabilisation plan aimed to culminate on the day of the expiry of the license, of which the bombs and the attempts by big capital to create food shortages are only the first steps.

But the Venezuelan people, side by side with the military, have etched in their memories the events of April 13, 2002, because as they say in Venezuela, “every 11 has its 13”.

Formation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela Moves Forward

2007-04-22T05:25:00.000-07:00

By: Chris Carlson - Venezuelanalysis.com

Merida, April 20, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- Venezuela President Hugo Chávez took another step on Thursday in the formation of the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The President presided over the swearing in of thousands of new "promoters" of the party at an event in Caracas. During his speech, Chávez called out to two pro-Chávez governors who oppose the PSUV to join the opposition, and called on voters in their states to revoke their mandates.

The formation of the new party moved forward yesterday with the swearing in of more than 16,000 "promoters" of the party. This is part of the second step in the formation process. The first step in the process took place in March with the designation and swearing in of the first wave of "promoters."

The second stage, which began on March 24th and lasts until June 24th, entails the activation of promoters across the country to discuss the PSUV. These promoters of the party have the responsibility of carrying out the census and registration of party members and motivating the participation of the people. Party members will then elect representatives to a Founding Congress which will design the political program and ideology of the party.

The President announced that registration for the party will begin on April 29th and will last until June 2nd. He also said that the National Electoral Council (CNE) will supervise the process. The PSUV hopes to reach 70,000 promoters to be sworn in on May 26th who will then make up the "socialist battalions."

"This bigger group will then make up the 22,000 socialist battalions all over the country to organize the party on a national level," said Chávez. Each of the battalions will then elect a spokesperson for the party assembly.

Chávez, who first proposed the idea of a United Socialist Party during his 2006 presidential campaign, emphasized the importance of the creation of a unitary force and stressed that the Bolivarian Revolution needs true revolutionaries.

"A tree that is born crooked never straightens its branches," he said to the party promoters yesterday, urging the promoters not to deviate from revolutionary principles. "Let's make sure, then, that our tree, the PSUV, is born straight, without deviations." he said.

In that light, Chávez criticized the position of certain party leaders who have rejected the idea of a unified party. Chávez said that he did not need the support of the governor of Sucre, Ramón Martínez, calling him "counterrevolutionary" and a "coward," and told him to join the ranks of the opposition.

"I don't accept cowardliness or deceit, Governor. Go to the opposition! I don't want you here with us. I don't accept your support. It is you that is a farce, a counterrevolutionary," he said to the Sucre governor. "Find your place, I don't consider you with us, I consider you against us!"

The President also warned the governor of Aragua, Didalco Bolívar, telling him that if he wants to take the same position as Martínez that he can go too.

"We don't need him here either," said Chávez, who then called on the people of those states to convene recall referendums to revoke their mandates, a right afforded to Venezuelans under the 1999 Constitution.

Both governors, leaders of the center-left pro-Chávez party PODEMOS, had criticized the idea of the United Socialist party after Chávez called on all pro-Chávez parties to unite behind one party with one political platform. Political leaders of other pro-Chávez parties hesitated as well, waiting to analyze the party profile, but now have slowly agreed to unite.

Chávez welcomed Communist Party leader Roberto Hernández to the PSUV yesterday. Hernández has been a militant in the Communist Party of Venezuela, but was present at the event. He also thanked Aristóbulo Isturiz, ex-Minister of Education and militant of Patria Para Todos (PPT) for his support of the PSUV.

Chávez said they had "given a true example of conciousness," and called on those who were still undecided to "come with us, our arms are wide open."

Now or never- Communist Party of Venezuela on USP

2007-04-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

In December last year, President Hugo Chavez called for the setting up
of a new united socialist party and urged all Venezuelan
revolutionaries to join. The Communist Party of Venezuela has since
been engaged in an internal debate about whether to dissolve and join,
or continue as an independent party. In the statement below, 14
members of their Central Committee argue that not to join the united
socialist party would be to abandon the existing revolution for the
sake of a hypothetical future revolution.

************ ********* ********* ********* *******

In transition to Socialism, the national liberation revolution demands
the urgent unity of the revolutionary forces against a powerful Yankee
imperialism and its Venezuelan servants.

This has been the strategic aim of the Communist Party of Venezuela
(PCV) since its foundation in 1931, ratified at its 13th Extraordinary
Congress that took place on the 3rd and 4th of March this year under
the following premise:

"The advance towards socialism demands the simultaneous
construction of a revolutionary party that will group together those
parties that have expressed the most consistent stance towards both
the social classes and the sectors historically engaged in the
revolution and socialism"

"To this end, the Communist Party and the
Young Communist League have stated their firm decision and intention
to pave the way for the joint and organic unity of the revolutionary
peoples, to be used as an instrument of collective political
management for the construction of socialism".

The formation of a socialist party requires a very serious effort in
order to imbue it with an ideological, political and organisational
structure that will accord with the socialist objective. Therefore it
is paramount that the party represents the exploited classes, and
first and foremost the working class. In 1936 and the years that
followed, this was the hot topic of discussion. Acción Democrática [a
now largely defunct social democratic party], which was defined as a
multiclass party, is an example of how disastrous this concept proved
for the Venezuelan people. This is not to say that we should shut out
people from other social strata, but in order to participate they must
comply with the ideology and the policies of the exploited classes, as
well as their organisational structure. In addition, we Marxists have
always recognised the revolutionary values of original Christianity,
as President Chavez does in our times.

The united revolutionary party is the culmination of a 76 year-long
struggle by the Venezuelan communists for national liberation and
socialism. The revolution that we have advocated is on the march and
we can not avoid making this commitment.

Our responsibility is to strive, alongside the popular masses, for the
formation a party that represents the exploited classes, one capable
of achieving proletarian internationalism; that will promote the
independent development of our country; one that will strive for full
socialism and the liberation of oppressed people, and that will fight
corruption and bureaucracy.

If we do not go down this path, we would be abandoning the current
revolution for the sake of a hypothetical future revolution.

It's now or never!

The rallying cry that gathers us all here today is:

Fatherland, Socialism or Death!

Caracas, 17th April, 2007

The statement is signed by the following members of the PCV Central
Committee:

Roberto Hernández Wohnsiedler, Jesús Germán Faría, Carlos Del Vecchio,
Tatiana Delgado, Johnny Niño, Omar Marcano, Euro Faría, José Laguna,
Iván Delgado, Freddy González, Leopoldo Niño, Enrique Franco, Juana
García, Getulio Fonseca.

Article translated from Spanish by James Walsh and Rafael Lafuente for
http://21stcenturysocialism. com/

The Bolivarian Dream- Video Art exhibition

2007-04-15T19:36:00.000-07:00

Video Art from Latin America

Sunday 22 April 2007, 5pm

St Paul Street Gallery

34 St. Paul St

FREE

St Paul Street Gallery is pleased to present video art programme Bolivarian Dream, developed by Chilean artist collective Hoffmann's House specifically for the South Project's Santiago programme in October 2006. The video compilation features a selection of 24 contemporary Latin American video artists who, in various ways, explore notions of collaboration and unification.

Bolivarian Dream takes as a reference point the utopic vision of Latin American political figure Simon Bolivar, whom aspired to foster a unified pan–America in the early 1820s. The curatorial aim was to show a broad selection of video art from the area, rather than a thematic compilation, and features work by Ivan Navarro (Chile), Pablo Helguera (Mexico), Douglas Rodrigo Rada (Bolivia), and Rolando Vargas (Colombia).

Approximate running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

For further information on this public programme please contact St Pauls Street Gallery on +64 9 921 9999 ext 8313

A view from Venezuela:a national coordinator of the UNT union federation writes

2007-04-10T21:51:00.000-07:00

A view from Venezuela:

Orlando Chirino, a national coordinator of the UNT union federation and a leader of its C-Cura ‘classist’ tendency, writes

From the communal councils, the labour councils, the peasant councils and also councils of delegates from the armed forces, there should be born a new parliament of the people, which would then effectively represent the sectors that are most dynamic and most committed to the revolutionary process. The existing national assembly is a decrepit organism. The low participation in the December 2005 elections [25 percent] is proof that the mass of the population no longer expect much from it.

We defend something new and fully autonomous, in which the delegates have the independence and sovereignty to express the proposals of the sectors they represent. This is a vital issue, which we question in the case of the communal councils. They are financed and controlled directly by the presidency, which limits their action. They could be more representative, much better linked to the population but if they do not have independence and financial, administrative and political autonomy they will end up like the national assembly—as an appendage of the government.

It is not only a question of electing delegates from the communities, the workers and the peasants. We conceive of the councils as real organs of power. The communal councils should be those who administer all the resources for their locality, who administer and control public services, education and health, who oversee the development of infrastructural works in their locality. The labour councils should have the mission of developing the struggle for the expropriation of enterprises and exercising direct control over them. The peasant and indigenous councils should have the goal of a profound agrarian reform, the elimination of big landed property and the development of peasant cooperatives to advance agrarian production in accord with the necessities of the population.

I see the question of the councils of soldiers and middle officers of the armed forces from the same perspective. The antagonism between social classes expresses itself and develops inside the armed forces. Let’s remember what happened from 9 to 12 April 2002 [during the attempted coup against Chavez]. The councils of soldiers’ and officers’ delegates must be constituted so that they can demand their democratic rights, like the election and free removal of their superiors, to replace odious submission and blind obedience by conscious commitment to the revolution. They should have the right to organise trade unions to defend their economic and social conditions, and, above all, to link themselves to the communities and the workers so as to organise workers’ and popular militias.

Venezuela: The Revolution Unfolding in Latin America

2007-04-10T01:46:00.000-07:00

Venezuela: The Revolution Unfolding in Latin America

by Jorge Jorquera
Contents
Introduction

Venezuelan Politics and Class

Neoliberalism, the Erosion of Consensus and the Rise of a New Popular Movement*

The ‘Democratic Strategy’ of the Bolivarian Revolution

Capitalist Power

Beginning of a Counter-Power

Problem of Political Leadership

A New Era of Latin American Rebellion and Revolution

* The term popular is used here in the sense of the Spanish language word popular, which in English translates something more like “ordinary people”.

Appendices

Interview with Hugo Chavez

Bitter Lessons of Chile

Jorge Jorquera is a long-term Chilean solidarity activist.
Introduction

A revolutionary process is unfolding in Venezuela, part of a continental rebellion unparalleled since the 1960s and 70s. Bourgeois power is being challenged by the emergence of a counter-power of the working classes. The reforms of the Chavez government have re-ignited the class struggle after years of defeat and decay of the left. This is not a simple replay of the Salvador Allende government in Chile 30 years ago. The Venezuelan army is deeply divided and within it there is a revolutionary current of officers and soldiers. Chavez himself has radicalised and fallen back not on the institutions of bourgeois democracy but the revolutionary power of the working masses.

Internationally the left has become all too accustomed to analysing defeat and unfamiliar with the measure of a revolution. The development of the Venezuelan class struggle is an important opportunity to re-acquaint ourselves with the real-world development of class consciousness and the tactical complexities of a life and death struggle for power.

This publication is only a condensed introduction to the evolution of the struggle and its key challenges but we hope that it might inspire others to study the Venezuelan revolution and draw from it the inspiration now feeding rebellion across Latin America.

Venezuelan Politics and Class

The class consensus maintained by Venezuela’s bourgeois party-system proved exceptionally durable, lasting from 1958 through to the late 1980s. Unlike in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and other Latin American countries, Venezuela’s ruling class managed to survive the class upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s without recourse to a long-lasting military dictatorship in order to contain the workers’ movement. When the system did break down, it did so dramatically, bringing forth the most precipitous fall of bourgeois “democratic” political forces anywhere on the continent.

Venezuela’s bourgeois democratic stability, as in the rest of Latin America, was established only after violent class struggle at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is when the modern Latin American ruling class forged its political identity, in class battles against a young but rapidly politicised working class.

Military sponsored rule maintained the control of the mantuanos (a landowning class of European extraction) over the vast majority of the population, the pardos (descendents from African slaves), for most of Venezuela’s early post-independence history. The modernisation of the Venezuelan economy started in earnest with the regime of Juan Vicente Gomez who took power in 1908. Under Gomez the economy was opened to international capital, which set-up oil extracting operations in the Maracaibo oilfields and began the process of transforming the economy and class structure of the country.

In 1935 in the context of increasing stirrings among the new working class, Gomez’s former aide General Eleazar Lopez Contreras took power. During the Contreras regime most democratic forces operated underground, including the burgeoning communist forces. However, even under conditions of restricted suffrage and indirect elections (members of congress were elected by municipal councils), democratic forces managed to gain some representation in the 1937 elections. Repression followed immediately, with leading left figures arrested and a decree adopted in March 1937 exiling most of these leaders.

By the end of the Contreras period, however, it was clear that a new relationship of class forces was emerging. The oil-based transformation of the economy was increasing the social weight of the urban classes, both working class and urban “middle-classes”. A new correlation of power was being forged in a battle among the elites, and between them and the growing urban popular forces. In the April 1941 presidential elections the Partido Democratico Nacional (PDN), the precursor of Accion Democratica, was de facto allowed to participate. It’s candidacy, with Romulo Gallegos (novelist and educator), was largely symbolic but represented the rise of the new “democratic” bourgeois forces.

The new president, General Medina Angarita, Contreras’ minister of war, had no choice but to continue with the liberalisation of bourgeois rule. The PDN applied for and was quickly granted legalisation, becoming formally constituted in September 13 1941 as Accion Democratica (AD). AD wasted no time in establishing itself as the bourgeois-democratic party, par excellence. According to AD’s most outstanding historical figure and principal Venezuelan social-democrat, Romulo Betancourt, “the leadership of AD established for itself the watchword of: ‘Not a single district, not a single municipality without its party organisation’.”1

AD pioneered the “mass” (clientalist) politics of the Venezuelan ruling classes.2 It rapidly established itself in every town and urban barrio.3 Most importantly it waged a dirty war in the labour movement against the communist left, which by 1945 it had clearly won. This was facilitated by the Stalinised class collaborationist politics of the communist movement, the majority of which lent its support to the Medina regime.

When in October 1945 a small number of officers sought to oust Medina and deepen the liberalisation process, AD was centrally placed to lead a new government - a civilian-military junta composed of four AD members, two military officers and one independent intellectual figure. This regime, whose three year rule became known as the trienio, witnessed the massive expansion of democratic space. Universal suffrage was introduced and the voting age reduced to 18. Elections were held in October 1946 for a national constituent assembly (to draw-up a new constitution), then in December 1947 to elect a new president and congress and once again in May 1948 for municipal councils. During the trienio, Venezuela’s second-party of bourgeois government was formed. The bourgeois-conservative Comite de Organizacion Politica Electoral Independiente (COPEI) emerged from the Catholic-based Union Nacional Estudiantil (UNE), which had split from the secular and once radical Federacion Estudiantil de Venezuela (FEV) in 1936. 4 Also during the trienio, the communist movement held its Unity Congress and formally established the (mostly) united Partido Comunista de Venezuela (PCV) in November 1946.

This period also witnessed the massive expansion of labour organisation. In 1946 alone, 500 new unions were formed.5 In November 1947, the Confederacion de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV) was formed and within a year claimed 300,000 members.6 The same expansion of organisation occurred among the rural population, with the Federacion Campesina de Venezuela (FCV) growing massively. In the countryside the agrarian reform shifted the political power from central government administrators to union and party officials. Likewise, the CTV became a vehicle for AD control of the labour movement.

The trienio exposed the growing threat of working class political mobilisation as well as the still significant intra-bourgeois divisions, reflected in the AD and COPEI power struggles. To avoid anything like the Colombian period of La Violencia (30 years of intra-bourgeois civil war and class war), the ruling class majority opted for a military coup and the AD-led government fell on November 24, 1948. The next 10 years of Perez Jimenez’s brutal dictatorship repressed the left and helped AD, COPEI and other bourgeois opposition forces to mend differences and lay the foundations for the future stability of bourgeois-democratic rule.

The leadership of AD marginalised its more radical cadre, which had been working underground with the PCV in organising opposition to the dictatorship, and in October 1958, the 3 major bourgeois-democratic parties – AD, COPEI and Union Republicana Democratica (URD) - signed the Pact of Punto Fijo. This agreement put aside their petty-political differences and laid the political basis for the bourgeois-democratic consensus that prevailed till the late 1980s. AD reconciled itself with the influence of the Church (its major source of previous friction with COPEI) and a power-sharing arrangement was forged in the organised labour movement to marginalise the left. A system of proportional representation in the CTV and many individual unions promoted this arrangement.7

This marginalisation of the left in the labour movement combined with the way in which elements of the left – especially the radicalised student base of the bourgeois-democratic parties - interpreted the Cuban revolution, resulted in a strategic focus on (rural) guerilla war. The left, especially youth and student base of AD was expelled and made up the bulk of the Movimiento Izquierda Revolucionario (MIR), formed in April 1960. Along with the radicalised student base of the URD and finally the PCV, the MIR opted for guerilla war. This proved a disaster for the left. Along with the targeted repression of the Betancourt government, this strategy further marginalised the left and contributed to strengthening the political and ideological grip of AD and COPEI. By 1965 the PCV had already decided to pull back from the guerilla struggle, leaving its left-wing out in the cold.

The Venezuelan left was dealt a heavy blow before it could gain any of the influence that, in the context of an international radicalisation and looming economic decline, much of the rest of the Latin American left was beginning to accumulate. This provided an important basis for the continuity of bourgeois-democratic government in Venezuela till the late 1980s.

Notes

1. Conflict and Political Change in Venezuela, Daniel H Levine. Princeton University Press 1973, p. 28.

2. Clientalism refers to a political relationship rooted in patronage and bureaucratically maintained influence.

3. Barrio refers to suburb but with the connotation of “neighbourhood”.

4. FEV and UNE were both national student organisations.

5. El Petroleo de Venezuela, Romulo Betancourt. Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico 1976.

6. ibid., p 37.

7. ibid., p 46.

Neoliberalism, the Erosion of Consensus and the Rise of a New Popular Movement

Lasting between the 1920s and 1970s, an oil based “development-strategy” underpinned the long bourgeois-democratic consensus of Venezuelan politics. In this period the economy grew at a remarkable average rate of 3.9% per year, more than twice the Latin American average.1 Two key characteristics of Venezuelan politics were based on the distribution of oil rent.

Firstly, the stability of the bourgeois party-system depended on its strong clientalist character, made possible by the public distribution of oil revenues. People joined and supported AD and COPEI to get their share of the crumbs. According to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development study in the late 1980s, out of a population of some 20 million, AD and COPEI claimed a membership of three and two million respectively. In Caracas alone, 150, 000 people were affiliated to both.

Linked to the clientalist character of the party-system was the role of the organised labour movement as an adjunct to this system. As the labour movement’s membership came mainly from the oil and public sectors, it was more easily co-opted by government. While governments’ could afford to distribute some crumbs to the organised labour force the trade union movement became a vehicle for state intervention rather than independent class action. This was compounded by the conscious corporatism of the AD leadership in the union movement. This leadership injected the movement with an ideology based on seeking privilege rather than establishing class solidarity with the vast majority of workers who remained outside the formal economy and unorganised.2

The other characteristic of Venezuelan politics based on its oil economy is the especially parasitical and politicised character of the national bourgeoisie, whose “rent-seeking” mentality made them much more like mafia bosses than “business people”.

The last hurrah of this economic model was the first (AD) government of Carlos Andres Perez (1974-79), which used the windfall of the global oil shock to nationalise the oil industry and attempt a big industrialisation push, with public sector investments in large-scale industries like iron, steel, aluminum and coal. When COPEI’s Luis Herrera Campins was elected in 1979, he reduced import duties from 300% to less than 100% and cut public spending, heralding the beginning of neoliberal de-regulation and the process of restructuring the Venezuelan economy.

While the AD government of Jaime Lusinchi (1984-89) was forced, under pressure from its trade union bureaucracy, to revert to some minimum social spending measures, the tide of neoliberalism was gaining pace and the very basis of the Venezuelan economy and its bourgeois-democratic stability was beginning to crumble.

When the second AD government of Perez took office in 1989 it was no longer the clientalist-AD of the past. Perez even surprised some in his own party with the selection of a government cabinet including in key posts a number of non-AD members, mainly associated with Venezuela’s elite business school, the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion. The government elaborated a strategic plan for the (neoliberal) restructuring of the economy along the lines advised by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The initial instruments for the implementation of this plan included – ending price controls on goods and services, devaluing the currency, large and successive reductions of import tariffs, increasing prices on public goods and services, reducing taxes on business and the wealthy and liberalising interest rates.

El Caracazo

On Monday February 27 1989 the government’s first price hikes took affect - a 10% increase in the price of petrol and 30% in “public” transport ticket prices. The people of Venezuela responded to the Perez government’s neoliberal program with a shock treatment of their own.

In the early hours of that morning the first protests began in a number of central transport points throughout Caracas’ suburbs. In the Nuevo Circo de Caracas terminal, servicing major satellite cities, and in a number of terminals servicing transport to Caracas from cities like La Guaira, Catia La Mar and Guarenas, protests started before 6am. Similar protests began soon after throughout the cities of Barquisimeto, San Cristobal, Merida, Maracay, Barcelona, Puerto La Cruz, Los Teques, Puerto Ordaz, y Maracaibo. By that afternoon protests had spread to every significant population centre.

The protests often started as incidents between individuals or small groups, like verbal exchanges between people and bus drivers. Within hours these were turning into collective actions – protests, road blockades, street barricades, and shop invasions. By 7.30am that morning in the city of Guarenas, adjacent to Caracas, people had began to burn down a major commercial-shopping centre and take goods. These sort of actions quickly spread to the capital and throughout the country. By 6pm that evening tens of thousands of people were engaged in street protests, all major roads in Caracas were blockaded and the city’s subway was forced to close down.3

The slogans that could be heard and seen written on walls included: “El pueblo tiene hambre” (The people are hungry), “El pueblo esta bravo” (The people are angry), and “Basta el engano” (Enough of the deceit). When people went into shops to take goods, they were often heard singing the national anthem as they did so, many carried the national flag and in many cases people organised the stealing of goods by lining up in an orderly manner. This was not primarily a case of mass looting or riots, as the media later tried to portray it. This was a semi-organised (though largely non-politicised) expression of working class opposition to neoliberal austerity.

For over 24 hours the government authorities were nowhere to be seen. Neither were any of the political parties or trade unions represented at any of the protests that sprouted up throughout the country. It was only around midday on Tuesday February 28 that the minister of the interior appeared on television to announce that the government would not permit this “violence”. As the minister fainted during his television pronouncement, it only added to the atmosphere of uncertainty. Just before 6pm that evening president Perez and his cabinet went on air across all the television networks and declared the cessation of a number of civil rights guaranteed under the constitution and the beginning of a state of emergency between the hours of 6pm and 6am. Thus begun a massive and violent crackdown, which by Saturday March 4 had already claimed at least 400 dead, mostly civilians executed by the army. The injured were in the thousands.

The Caracazo signalled the turning point in the interminable process of de-legitimisation of Venezuela’s bourgeois-democratic parties and the trade union movement sponsored by them. By the time of the 1993 elections neither AD or COPEI could muster a credible presidential campaign. Seeing the writing on the wall, Rafael Caldera led a group of COPEI dissidents in an alliance with the eurocommunist Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) known as Convergencia. They triumphed based on a demagogic campaign against AD’s privatisations and by avoiding criticism of the relatively popular but failed 1992 coup (led by military officers including Chavez) and instead using it as an opportunity to attack the measures of the previous government.

The Caracazo also brought onto Venezuela’s historical stage a previously excluded actor, the 80% of the population who live in poverty, working mostly in the informal sector, and previously unorganised. As the material base of the old bourgeois-democratic consensus crumbled, Venezuela’s pardos began to mobilise and make demands on the authorities. In the almost ten years between 1989 and the Chavez triumph, two formally registered protests occurred per day, not including trade union industrial action.4 Venezuelan politics shifted from the tradition of the “party-ocracy” to the street.

Notes

1. The Political Feasibility of Adjustment in Ecuador and Venezuela. Christian Morrisson (Editor). Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 1994, p. 93.

2. Corporatism refers to the “incorporation” of trade unions or other community organisations into the mechanisms of government and state. The origins of the term date back to 19th century conservatives, who instead of supporting the liberal idea of extending the franchise, wanted to give parliamentary representation to groups representing specific industries. It’s used quite commonly now to refer to the practices of social-democracy in co-opting trade union and social movements.

3. Pieced together from local newspapers and other local sources.

4. Protesta y Cultura en Venezuela: Los Marcos de Accion Colectiva en 1999. Margarita Lopez Maya. Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales 2002, p. 13.

The “Democratic Strategy” of the Bolivarian Revolution

The revolutionary situation unfolding in Venezuela today represents the fusing of the new “street democracy” of the masses with the political movement that emerged out of the army in the early 1980s. This movement, the Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200 (MBR-200), whose central leader became Hugo Chavez, originated from the profoundly democratic aspirations of a generation of junior officers drawn from the poor masses and educated in a unique military and social setting.

Unlike the rest of Latin America’s career military officers, Venezuela’s were not trained in the Escuela de las Americas but rather in the national Military Academy, which was fundamentally transformed in 1971 by the Plan Andres Bello.1 This reform integrated officer training with general university education. This meant the new officers not only studied a much broader array of political theory but also participated in general university life, being exposed to the often radical ideas of their fellow (non-military) students. The reform also involved a certain (liberal) democratisation of the military structure, at least to the extent that promotion became more weighted toward merit rather than family connections.

General Wilfredo Ramon Silva, a supporter of Chavez, is a good example of those first generations of officers trained in the new academy. Ramon Silva is one of 11 children born in a little town called La Miel, to a poor family, his mother an assistant nurse and his father a truck driver.

We who lived in the countryside witnessed all the abuses of the landowners against the campesinos – how they stole our lands and mistreated us. I lived through all that. My family lived through it.2 3

In the new military academy these young officers in training could reflect on their own experiences alongside radical students and with the benefit of exposure to radical writings, including those of Marx and Lenin. This was a contradiction that the old guard of officers was not unaware of. General Ramon Silva recalls the animosity they felt from the older officers and how at certain points some of the literature from Marx and socialist history was prohibited.4

Unlike their counterparts in the rest of the continent, these same officers were exposed to a very weak guerilla movement. Instead of intense fighting, they encountered the massive misery of the rural population and contrasted that to the wealth of the elites they had occasion to mix with. General Ramon Silva recalls:

Hence those of us from the same graduation started talking during our free time and asking ourselves what it was that we were combating. You were supposedly looking for the guerilla, but what you saw was the misery, the extreme poverty of the population. On many opportunities we would swap our food with them for one of their chickens, and sometimes we just gave it to them, because we witnessed so much misery…One day we would be in the countryside with the campesinos, seeing that poverty, then another day we would be in the city, or at a meeting with a governor or even the President of the Republic, and then we would see the opulence, the wastage, the great quantities of whisky drunk, the great extravagance. When we would see that contrast we would ask ourselves: ‘Well, what is it that we are fighting? Can we accept that such poverty continue, the misery of these campesinos, while this group that’s up here continues taking advantage and doing business’.5

The MBR-200 was born when a group of four such officers – Chavez, Raul Baduel, Urdaneta Hernandez and Felipe Antonio Acosta Carlez – took an oath on December 17, 1982. General Luis Felipe Acosta Carlez, brother of Felipe Antonio recalls what his brother said to their father the weekend after the four took that oath:

Papa, we have just taken an oath at the Saman de Guere, where we asked for a change in Venezuela – a philosophical change, a democratic change, where the people participate, where the people give their opinion, where the needs of the people are satisfied through the public policies of the government.6

The MBR-200 started small but with a plan to organise. For years they worked an underground network throughout the army, making contact with officers they thought would be sympathetic, careful to avoid being exposed but little by little reaching significant numbers and developing a loyal and disciplined cadre base. They had a determined political project, which did not escape the attention of the ruling elites. In fact one of their founders, Felipe Antonio Acosta Carlez, was assassinated during the Caracazo. It’s suspected that this was at the hands of a secret police agent on the orders of then president Carlos Andres Perez.

Chavez himself played a central role in the development of the movement, refusing promotion so that he could stay at the military academy as a trainer and continue to influence new generations of officers and soldiers with the ideas of the MBR-200. It was many of the younger officers trained under Chavez that played a key organising role in the failed 1992 coup.

Not all the MBR-200 agreed with the attempted coup but they concurred with the objective. As Colonel Jesus Del Valle Morao Cardona (currently in charge of Presidential security) notes, their aim was not to establish a military regime, rather they aimed to wrest power from the elites and open a process of democratisation based on the idea of establishing a new democratic constitutional foundation.7

The 1992 coup demonstrated the weakness of a political movement still disconnected from the emerging leaderships of the new popular movement. The plans of the MBR-200 were inspired by the 1989 Caracazo, where many of its leaders participated, sent by the Perez government to kill people but instead often taking charge in the organisation of expropriating goods from stores and generally keeping an order of solidarity among the people on the streets. The MBR planned the coup for May 1992 to coincide with a general strike. When the coup had to be put forward, fearing that the MBR-200 plans had been discovered, the organisation of the strike proved weak.

Many of the officers and soldiers that participated in the coup and most of the leaders ended up jailed and persecuted. While in prison however, Chavez and the cadre of the MBR-200 took the time to study and consider their next steps. The coup had earned them notoriety and a certain respect from the masses, who were unaccustomed to seeing any of the country’s leaders assume responsibility for their deeds. Chavez publicly assumed responsibility for the coup and made his famous statement, saying that “for now” he would take the punishment given to him. The masses interpreted this as a call to action for the future.

Once out of jail the MBR leadership set a different tactical course. They realised the importance of developing the movement outside of the army and, given the opening created by the increasing de-legitimisation of the old two-party system, they opted for an electoral road. Chavez and other MBR-200 leaders traveled the entire country meeting with communities and developing their dialogue with community leaders. In 1997 they set up the Movimiento para la Quinta Republica (MVR). The MVR planted their key tactic at the centre of its political platform – the refounding of the Venezuelan Republic based on a new, democratic constitution. As Chavez noted:

Our process is a transition from a neoliberal model to a humanist self-government – a more democratic model that would resolve the basic needs of the people.8

Even before his election Chavez faced a massive slandering campaign from the Venezuelan ruling class. Polls gave him 8% in the presidential race. Instead he won the December 1998 election with a majority of 56%. The new government moved immediately to the convocation of a “constituent assembly” to draft a new constitution. Of the 131 members elected to this constituent assembly the Polo Patriotico – consisting of various organisations supporting the Chavez government – won almost all of them.9 The new constitution was approved by a majority of 129 votes to 2 and then approved in a referendum by 70% of the population.

The new constitution established a democratic foundation for national politics unimaginable in any other Latin American capitalist country. It also indicated that the Chavez forces had some understanding of the limitations of government and at least partially understood that their democratic objectives required a struggle for a new type of state.

The participation of the people in the development, execution and control of the public power, is the necessary means by which to achieve the protagonism that can guarantee their all-round development, both individual as well as collective. It is the obligation of the state and duty of society to facilitate the generation of the conditions most favourable for this to be practiced.10

Still constrained by congress and the continuous sabotage of the ruling class and its politicians, the Chavez government did not limit itself to the institutions of bourgeois democracy, like Salvador Allende had in Chile 30 years earlier. While the new mass movement booming during these years remained ill-organised and without consolidated leadership, Chavez turned to the one (organised) social force which he thought could provide a motorforce for his government – the army.

On February 27 1999, a date chosen symbolically to demonstrate solidarity with the Caracazo uprising, Chavez launched Plan Bolivar 2000. The plan mobilised the army to carry out massive social works programs – constructing housing for the poor, dealing with health and nutritional problems and assisting with a range of other public projects. Over two years Plan Bolivar 2000 built more homes than had been built in the previous 20 years.

Most importantly, Plan Bolivar 2000 further increased the solidarity between the working classes and the soldiers of the Venezuelan army. However, in demonstrating the critical role that army officers were playing as cadre of the Bolivarian revolution, it also exposed the paternalism this bred and the gaping hole created by the lack of a political vanguard rooted in the new mass movement.

After the new constitution was adopted, the old congress was disbanded and new elections held. In July 2000 the Chavez forces won a majority in congress and Chavez was re-elected. In November 2000 the government enacted the Ley Habilitante, an old enabling law which allowed the executive of government to legislate 49 new laws without having to debate them in the congress. The 49 laws drawn-up by the government included a number involving substantial reforms of the economy and the government bureaucracy – a land reform law, laws privileging small and medium industry and the Hidrocarburos law aimed at re-organising the national oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDSVA). These laws taken together represented the first concrete incursion into the “property rights” of the Venezuelan ruling class.

Most importantly these laws, together with a range of reforms like the 3000 new Bolivarian schools and the beginning of the democratisation of education, gave massive impetus to the self-organisation of the mass movement and for the first time set in train its ideological formation.

As a consequence of the growing experiences of struggle, Chavez reacted to the limitations imposed by the institutions of Venezuela’s bourgeois democracy by continuing to deepen the democratic trajectory of the movement. On May 7 2001, while the MVR languished and many MVR politicians including governors continued along the lines of the old-style corrupt and clientalist politicians, Chavez publicly stated the need to re-establish the MBR-200. He called on well-known left militants such as Pablo Medina from the Patria Para Todos (ex Causa R) and Guillermo Garcia Ponce, long-term communist and previous PCV militant, to play a leading role in this process. In this way the Comando Nacional de la Revolucion was formed.

At the same time the Bolivarian Circles were launched, aimed at organising the movement on a street level and beginning the development of structures of peoples’ power that could organise social mobilisation and begin to ideologically combat the ruling class. The depth of this growing popular organisation was yet to be tested.

Notes

1. Escuelas de las Americas or School of the Americas (SOA), re-named in 2001 the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia. The SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics.

2. Campesinos can refer to both rural workers and peasants.

3. Militares Junto al Pueblo. Interviews by Marta Harnecker 2002.

4. ibid.

5. ibid.

6. ibid.

7. ibid.

8. Marta Harnecker interview quoted in Venceremos, Bursts of Life, not Gunfire or Death, Stuart Munckton.

9. The Polo Patriotico involved a range of political organisations, including major parties such as the Partido Para Todos and the MAS.

10. Constitution of Venezuela.

Capitalist Power

In the wake of a failed labour strike, on the day of April 11 2002, the anti-Chavez forces organised a protest with the backing of the rightist mayor of Caracas, Alfredo Pena. As the opposition march made its way to the Miraflores presidential palace, a counter-protest by the government’s supporters approached from the rear. Then a street battle began as the pro-Chavez forces defended themselves against shooting from the Caracas city council controlled police and opposition snipers. This incident was manipulated by the mass media and became the trigger for the coup.

Those involved in the planning of the coup included: Pedro Carmona (president of Venezuela’s major business umbrella organisation); Alfredo Pena; Lorenzo Mendoza (from the Mendoza family, owners of the Grupo Polar, the biggest business conglomerate in Venezuela); Gustavo Cisneros (Venezuela’s supreme magnate, owner of key media and telecommunications interests, such as the Venevision Network and Direct TV, the biggest cable provider in Latin America); Jesus de Polanco (director of the Prisa business group, with massive interests in the distribution of education materials and owner of various radio stations and other media interests throughout Latin America); Charles Schapiro (US ambassador in Venezuela); Otto Reich (US sub-secretary of state for hemispheric issues); Aznar (Spanish president); James Rodger and Ronald McCammon (lieutenant-colonel and colonel respectively of the US army, both assisting the anti-Chavez generals and officers working alongside them on the fifth floor of the Comandancia del Ejercito de Venezuela).

With the exception of the assistance provided by ex-president Carlos Andres Perez and his advisers, the political leadership of the coup was left directly in the hands of Venezuela’s club of capitalists. This was one of its key weaknesses: the lack of a political leadership. The old political elite of the Venezuelan ruling class was and remains so thoroughly discredited that it has no authority, including among the middle classes - the force that could potentially provide a social base for a post-coup regime. Neither AD or COPEI can provide the political leadership that, for example, the Christian Democrats did in the Chilean coup of 1973 and the military dictatorship that followed.

The only force that might have provided the April coup some important political leadership, the Central Trabajadora de Venezuela (CTV), was excluded from a leading role in the opposition by its business leaders, who fear any protagonism from the ‘plebian’ sections of the anti-government forces. The CTV’s stormtrooper role in the April coup only served to further reduce its political influence among the better-off workers it had previously organised and in the middles classes who’s interests it had championed.

Lacking this political leadership the anti-Chavez forces are also much more susceptible to petty squabbles and divisions. The Venezuelan capitalists who led the April 2002 coup and still dominate the opposition have limited political vision, as they put priority on their own specific economic interests. General Nestor Gonzalez, one of the anti-government conspirators in the army, recently reflected on this:

The CD [Coordinadora Democratica] has served to create divisions amongst the political opposition through personal, economic and party interests. The CD members will be cast aside when the people realise that they don’t represent the interests of the Venezuelan on the street.1

The power of the opposition

With the historical political forces of the ruling class long discredited, the opposition has suffered a permanent problem in re-establishing a tactically united political movement. Especially since its “civic” forces were so thoroughly exposed by their role in the April coup, the strength of the opposition has been increasingly stripped down to its bear essentials - the naked economic power of the capitalist class. Since the April coup the owners of Venezuela’s economy – especially in key interests such as the food, media, finance and oil – have wielded all their economic power to create chaos in the country, without giving much thought even to their own need to win public support and construct a viable political alternative.

This campaign reached an important turning point with the December 2002 opposition “strike” and the battle over the Petroleos de Venezuela (PDSVA).2

On December 2 2002, the opposition forces launched another “civic strike”. Like the one in April that preceded the coup, the strike was more of a lock-out and only marginally successful. In the first days almost all the commercial centres in the western side of Caracas were opened, while in the east they were mostly closed. Transport functioned normally, as did the banks, major food supermarkets, pharmacies and of course the informal economy. The increasingly discredited CTV, which organises mostly public servant unions, did not prove capable of mobilising even a majority of these unions for the December strike.

On Wednesday December 4 the situation began to escalate as strike activity became visible in the oil industry. The technocracy of PDSVA joined the civic-strike and with only a small number of upper-level technicians from the 45,000 workers employed, was able to paralyse the industry. The workers and peasants responded on December 7, with 2 million people from across the country rallying in Caracas against the shutdown. Over December and January the government moved in to restore production in the PDSVA, sacking some 3000 technocrats and beginning the process of establishing real public control over the oil sector.

The opposition proved it had the power to bring the country to its knees but not to win political support. When the opposition officially called off the strike on February 2 2003, it did so having lost control of the PDSVA, and to prevent a total hemorrhaging of its support base, as more middle class elements began to look to the government as the only source of stability.

The Venezuelan capitalist class has lost its more or less direct control over the country’s main industry but maintains its class rule through continued control of all the other key sectors of the Venezuelan economy - most importantly this includes almost the entirety of finance, media, telecommunications and the critical foods sector. In conjunction with imperialist economic sabotage, this allows the capitalist class the luxury of persevering in opposition even with a diminishing political movement and organised military support that for now at least, seems reduced to the 400 or so officers expelled from the armed forces after the April 2002 coup (a number of generals and the rest mostly from administrative positions).

The strategy of the counter-revolution, as it has always done, falls back on economic sabotage. For the most radicalised and desperate section of the opposition – mostly among the upper-middle classes – the point of this sabotage was clearly stated in a document revealed by intelligence agencies on May 9 2003 as a fifth conspiracy plan to overthrow the government:

…augment the levels of resistance and ferment chaos in order to arrive at ungovernability, which would provoke civil war, which Chavez and his group of millionaire friends would not be willing to sacrifice, or a civic-military coup which would avoid a civil war.3

This view is shared by the ousted military officers, the 135 so called “democratic military” who maintain the “liberated territory” of Plaza Altamira and occupy the Four Seasons hotel in Chacao, the most exclusive district in Caracas

When someone sells the country down the river, when they betray the people by imposing an outside regime that has no interest in the greater good, the well-being and peace of the people, freedom must be achieved whatever the cost. We’ve begun peacefully, but if we have to resort to other methods, we will.4

Other elements of the opposition aim to use the continued economic sabotage to re-win middle class sectors and divide the Chavez government and army, hoping that conditions can be improved for electoral success and a process of pushing back the gains of the movement can be set in train.

The test of the movement will be if it is able to combat this sabotage, which in essence entails the repression of the pro-capitalist forces and the concurrent extension of workers democracy. Failure to be decisive in this will lead the least politicised elements of the working and middles classes over to the opposition and create a more favourable relationship of forces for their counter-revolutionary objectives.

Notes

1. At Whatever Cost, Paolo Moiola. www.lapress.org

Coordinadora Democratica is the umbrella group of most of Venezuela’s opposition forces. It includes traditional parties like COPEI, newer right-wing parties like Primero Justicia, who represent mostly young executives and lawyers, as well as key institutional forces such as the association of business owners FEDECAMARAS and the CTV.

2. From the time of its establishment, with the nationalisation of Venezuelan oil in 1976, the PDSVA was increasingly corporatised and became a sort of “state within a state”, with enormous political clout and the source of great wealth for the elite of Venezuela and its imperialist masters. Oxford University researcher Dr Carlos Boue estimates that the PDSVA’s practice, of selling oil cheaply to its “own” refineries based in the imperialist North, accounts for one of the greatest international flows of capital in the South-North direction.

3. Denuncian Quinto Plan Conspirativo Contra el Gobierno de Hugo Chavez. Venpres May 9 2003.

4. At Whatever Cost, Paolo Moiola. www.lapress.org
Beginning of a Counter-Power

The popular response to the April 2002 coup revealed the embryonic development of a worker-peasant-soldier counter-power. The organisation of an uprising against the coup began in all these sectors and across them within hours of Chavez’s kidnapping on April 11.

In the early hours of the evening of April 12 radios began to report strong cacerolazos and protests in El Valle.1 The people in Caracas’ poor hillside suburbs started to come out onto the streets. Protests were reported in Catia, el 23 de Enero, Guarenas, Antimano and other areas of the greater-capital. The Caracas-La Guaira highway was blockaded. At the same time protest action began throughout the country’s interior. In Vargas, for example, on the morning of April 12, the Bolivarian Circles, MVR militants, land Committees and various women’s groups organised clandestine meetings to prepare the popular response, using a funeral that day as the means for organising a mass mobilisation.

The same day discussions were already well underway within the ranks of the army. Some soldiers within the palace regiment suggested a commando-style operation to take hostage all the coup-conspirators and then attempt to negotiate. It was decided to buy time first to unite with other forces.

The decisive action came from General Baduel, in charge of the Maracay based parachutists brigade and founding member of the MBR-200. He refused to recognise the Carmona regime and together with the people of Maracay, who had already taken over the streets and set-up barricades in preparation for battle, installed themselves in defiant opposition to the coup leaders. Word of Baduel’s stance soon reached leaders of the popular movement and soldiers throughout the country. The order went out through the Bolivarian Circles and other mass organisations for people to march toward the army barracks’. They did so in their thousands, calling on the soldiers therein to support the movement and demand the return of Chavez.

This strengthened the resolve of the officers and soldiers already planning against the coup leaders. On April 12 a group of young officers with contacts in both the important Fuerte Tiuna and the military academy, where a number of the coup conspirators had set up base, met to organise themselves.2 They had two key goals, to find a general at Fuerte Tiuna that would side with the people, and to break the media blackout on developments. Lieutenant-colonels Jesus Manuel Zambrano Mata and Francisco Espinoza Guyon played a leading role. They garnered the support of generals Martinez Mendoza and Garcia Carneiro at Fuerte Tiuna, they also organised the retaking of the government TV channel Canal 8.3

By 10am in the morning on April 13 the palace regiment had already taken over the palace and forced coup leaders to flee. They too were in contact with general Garcia Carneiro. They called to the palace a Spanish television crew and video taped a message making it clear that the Carmona regime was not recognised. Then lieutenant-colonels Zambrano Mata and Francisco Guyon went to Canal 8 to get the recorded message out. Contact had already been made with the Bolivarian Circles to organise a mass protest at the station. Once at the station the officers and movement leaders rallied the protest and forced the police to let them in. Armed with rudimentary crews and equipment from the barracks they finally got the station on air that afternoon.

By then hundreds of thousands of people were on the streets of Caracas, sweeping down from the hillside suburbs. The atmosphere was defiant, slogans echoed throughout: “Pueblo, escucha, unete a la lucha” (People, listen, unite in the struggle); “Chavez, amigo, el pueblo esta contigo” (Chavez, friend, the people are with you). In Maracay workers and soldiers were ready to march on Caracas if necessary. Within 48 hours an impressive web of communication and organisation had developed between the Bolivarian Circles, other mass and neighborhood organisations and the revolutionary elements in the army.

The Bolivarian Circles were launched in December 2001. At the time of the coup there were only some 8000 Bolivarian Circles, each having around ten or so members and organised mostly along a territorial basis – in streets and local communities - but also along sectoral lines. During the December 2002 battle for the PDSVA, Bolivarian Circles provided volunteer labour, groups to defend oil installations, and contacts to former oil workers and technicians.

The Bolivarian Circles now organise around 2 million people, some 10% of the adult population. They function as autonomous organs of people’s power capable of organising community campaigns, mobilising against capitalist sabotage and provocations and increasingly providing a forum for the development of the class consciousness and combativeness of the working masses. In April 2003 for example, the regional coordinators of the Bolivarian Circles in the 23 de Enero area of Caracas began to develop a Bolivarian School of People’s Power, with the aim of developing the political education of the movement. The ruling class rightly compare the Circles to the Cuban Committees in Defence of the Revolution in the scope of their role and the threat they pose to the institutions of bourgeois state power.

The self-organisation of Venezuela’s working classes is getting further impetus from the Chavez government’s land reform. Eight Venezuelan families own land equivalent to 18 times the size of greater Caracas. The Ley de Tierras has set a maximum legal size for farms ranging from 100 to 5,000 hectares, depending on productivity. It also imposes a special tax on any holding that is left more than 80% idle. At the same time, any Venezuelan citizen who is either the head of a family or is between 18 and 25 years old may apply for a parcel of land and after three years of cultivation acquire a title that can be passed on but not sold. This is changing the balance of power in the countryside, undermining the political strength of the old latifundia. Violence is escalating from their part and in response rural workers and peasants are organising, including arming themselves.

In the urban centres, where almost 90% of the population live, the government is pursuing initiatives to transfer the legal ownership of the barrios to the 10 million people (40% of the population) who inhabit them. Rather than leave this process to administrators, the government’s law required families in the barrios to establish land committees, which sent representatives to the National Assembly to discuss and amend the Special Law to Regularise Land Tenancy in Poor Urban Settlements. Land committees are made up of seven to eleven individuals elected by a gathering of at least half of a maximum of 200 families for each committee. These committees are not only responsible for regularising the process of urban land title distribution but are also playing an increasing role as a framework for self-government and for the general transformation and empowernment of the barrios. Many of the committees have formed sub-committees to deal with all sorts of tasks – such as assisting in municipal public works, organising cultural activities and organisation of security.

As a result of the increasing level of organisation and class consciousness among the working class as a whole, the historic grip of social-democracy and clientalism over the trade union movement is now in terminable crisis. On March 29, 2003 a new national trade union federation was formed – the Union Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT). The UNT was initiated with 56 national and regional federations and 14 national trade unions. It involves most of the key unions in the country, including petrol workers.

The UNT is still in formation but already represents many more workers than the CTV supposedly does. The leadership of the UNT has formed in the heat of class struggle, during and after the events of December 2002. Its orientation is clearly independent and based on a class struggle perspective. It leaves the CTV totally exposed as a bosses’ union and without any significant mobilising power.

There is a growing political consciousness in the trade union movement. On April 13 for example, after months of struggle and having exhausted legal channels, the Fenix textile factory workers in San Juan de los Morros occupied the factory and started producing under workers’ control. These sort of actions are being given massive stimulus by the discussion about workers control within the PDSVA. Workers are also aware that the government is behind them - on a number of occasions Chavez has come out in favour of workers occupying factories closed by the bosses.

Within the military itself there is a struggle going on to develop the revolutionary current and build the alliance with workers and peasants. After the April 2002 coup, some 400 mostly senior officers were removed and a restructure followed that put key people in all major posts commanding troops. These army leaders are not just “constitutionalists”, many represent a genuine revolutionary current.

When someone tells me they are institutionalists, I ask them, what does institutionalist mean? Does it mean that you fold your arms when the problem is political, social, when the problem is not strictly military? Being an institutionalist means knowing who your principal client is, what your business is. The business of the army is the defense of territory, of sovereignty. But sovereignty is the people; your client is the state and as the structure of the state is changing, the army has to change too. For me being an institutionalist means participating and facilitating the process of changing this organisation [armed forces] to adapt to the new state, which is contained in the Constitution. (General Virgilio Lameda).4

Notes

1. Cacerolazos are protests where people bang on their caceroles (pots and pans) as loudly as possible. They go back a long way in Latin American political tradition and recently have become most associated with the Argentinian popular rebellion against the neoliberal order.

2. Fuerte Tiunia is one of the major army forts in the Caracas area.

3. Garcia Carneiro is now the General Commander of the Venezuelan armed forces.

4. Militares Junto al Pueblo. Interviews by Marta Harnecker 2002.
Problem of Political Leadership

A revolutionary situation has opened up in the Venezuelan class struggle. The political consciousness and combativeness of a majority of workers, peasants and soldiers has taken a qualitative leap since the events of April and December 2002. Earlier this year Chavez himself described the situation this way,

[We concur] with Antonio Gramsci when he wrote, a crisis, a real crisis occurs when something which is dying has not finished dying and at the same time something which is being born has not finished being born.1

A life and death struggle for power is now unfolding. The ruling class is mobilising all its economic power and, with the assistance of imperialism, preparing conditions for a reactionary counter-offensive. The working masses are increasingly conscious of the stakes but they haven’t the centralised organisation that could best prepare them for victory in the decisive battles to come. The revolutionary movement lacks the political and ideological apparatus that could provide the necessary direction and organisation to unite every struggle, mobilise forces for every battle front, and develop the general capacity for self-organisation of the working masses.

This is the legacy of social-democracy in the labour movement, the opportunism that tainted and poisoned the Venezuelan left for so much of its history. After a brief period in the 1960s of charting an independent course, flawed as it was by its guerillismo, the MIR and Communist Party soon fell back into the framework of parliamentarist politics.2 When the Communist Party split in the 1970s the split went to the right, forming the eurocommunist Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). When the Causa R developed in the 1980s, many elements of it also fell victim to the trappings of AD-style social-democratic parliamentarism. Through these processes in the 1970s and 1980s thousands of left cadre, who today could potentially be in the frontlines, were lost to the revolutionary movement.

As the Chavez government has radicalised, the movement has been forced to rely on the leadership role provided by the MBR-200 supporters in the army. While these officers and soldiers have proved less corruptible than the electoral machinery of the movement – the MVR and the other left parliamentary parties that have supported the government – their role in mass organisation has bred a paternalism that can undermine the self-organisation of the masses.

Chavez and many other leaders of the movement have increasingly sought to consolidate a unified revolutionary leadership. At the same time as launching the Bolivarian Circles, Chavez called upon a number of leaders of the left and historic figures of the movement to form the Comando Politico de la Revolucion. According to Guillermo Garcia Ponce, director of the Comando,

The principle weakness of the revolutionary process is the absence of the party of the revolution. In Venezuela we have many revolutionary parties that support the process but we lack one capable of uniting them all. The government lacks a centre of leadership and mass organisation on the streets, that can unite the efforts and resources of all the revolutionaries…The revolutionary political parties have not been able to form a solid structure at the base [grassroots] level. They continue to be, in some ways, electoral apparatuses with organisation at the level of the upper and middle leadership but very weak at the base.3

Since May 2003 Chavez’s own party the MVR, has been undergoing a reorganisation aimed at democratising the party and turning it towards political organisation of the mass movement rather than an exclusive focus on electoral organisation. In June 2003 Chavez also announced the formation of the Frente Nacional. The FN is not intended to be another electoral alliance like the Polo Patriotico but a political front of the revolutionary mass and party organisations that can fuse the leadership capacity of these organisations.

The three-decade long discontinuity in the accumulation of revolutionary cadre is not something that will be easily made up. Time is not on the side of the Venezuelan revolutionary movement. Whether or not the new revolutionary leaders being forged in the heat of battle can step up to the task is yet to be tested. In turn this will also depend in some part on the development of a unified revolutionary leadership, capable of providing an ideological compass and executing the necessary tactical decisions that will face the revolution in the near future.

Notes

1. Chavez: “Con Golpistas no se negocia, se les derrota”, Danil Moser. www.rebelion.org January 19, 2003.

2. Guerillismo refers to the generalisation of guerilla tactics into a political strategy.

3. Punto Final issue 539, March 14 – 28, 2003.
A New Era of Latin American Rebellion and Revolution

Chavez concentrated on two fronts when first elected President – democratisation of the country and the construction of an international force that could support the Bolivarian revolution. Aware of the negative international relationship of forces, the Chavez government sought to give impetus to the process of South American and Caribbean integration and has tried to build an alliance against the ALCA, promoting the idea of an ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para las Americas).1 The government also privileged relations with OPEC countries, developed closer links within all the Third World international forums such as the Group of 15 and the Group of 77 and built economic links with countries such as China, India and Russia. The political intent of these links and alliances is obvious - Venezuela stands side by side with Cuba’s revolutionary foreign policy.

Each day the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean will be increasingly convinced that there is no other road but revolution. For us there is no other road but revolution. [Chavez]2

One of the greatest strengths of the revolution unfolding in Venezuela is that it is not isolated but part of a continental rebellion, one that compares to both the wave of radicalisation of the 1930s and that of the 1960s-70s. Neoliberalism in Latin America is in crisis. This is not so much an economic crisis but a political-ideological crisis. The market recipes of neoliberalism persist but they no longer enjoy the support of any significant sections of the population. The economic restructuring of neoliberalism has undermined the social base of the bourgeois states of Latin America, consolidated by the 1970s dictatorships and over decades of national development. This crisis of the ability of the ruling classes to rule involves a growing crisis of the state. In this context, struggles throughout the continent are taking not only defensive forms but in many cases offensive forms and the left is beginning to reconstruct.

The economic decline that now characterises the neoliberal model on the continent underpins this crisis. Between 1990 and 2002 multinational companies acquired some 4000 banks, telecommunications, transport, petrol and mining interests in Latin America.3 In many respects they have sucked the life out of the economies. Capital flows are increasingly speculative, many of the privatised firms are beginning to show signs of profit exhaustion, imports have smothered local production and the massively increased concentration of income has destroyed internal markets. In a place like Argentina, which had a strong internal market and relatively skilled labour force, the effects have been devastating – Argentinian professors and other professionals are now seen cleaning homes in the rich suburbs of Santiago Chile. In the poorer economies like Ecuador and Bolivia, the neoliberal reforms have destroyed what partial social nets previously existed – with life threatening consequences for the poor majorities.

The consequence is the political exhaustion of the neoliberal model. The ruling class’ alliances and political parties are being torn apart. The middle classes that previously provided the glue for bourgeois consensus are threatened with proletarianisation and increasingly unlikely to continue to support the old bourgeois parties. In this context it is also more difficult for the ruling classes to mediate their own divisions. Alongside this crisis of bourgeois politics there is a growing coordination of mass opposition. While 5 years ago popular struggle tended to be localised and atomised, today it is increasingly part of cross-sectoral and cross-city, regional and nationwide struggles against neoliberal measures. A campaign against privatisation of water or a labour struggle can easily spill over into a national political movement.

Three trends are emerging in this new period of crisis and intensified struggle. In some cases the bourgeois has the option of “Third Way” governments. Where the mass movement has suffered some defeats or is somehow in pause and the ruling class has no traditional parties of its own that can cohere sufficient social support – like Brazil, Chile, Uruguay – the ruling class is opting to support social-democratic parties who have managed to tie significant sections of the working class into the neoliberal agenda. This is the case with the Brazilian PT government, it’s the way the Chilean ruling class has maintained peace with the support of the Partido Popular-Partido Socialista and it’s the road Uruguay will likely take, with the possible election of the Frente Amplio.

The second political trend is the increasing militarisation of bourgeois rule. Where there is a landscape of generalised opposition as with Colombia or even where the threat exists, like in Argentina, Paraguay and Peru, the ruling class is already beginning to test the possibility of using the military to restore what “order” their political system has failed to maintain.

Thirdly there is the trend toward “rupture”. In Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, the ruling class seems unable to reweave any sort of political consensus. The movement in each of these countries has now been through an important accumulation of forces - in Ecuador there was the uprising of 2001, in Bolivia the national uprising in February 2003. In Bolivia especially, where the Movimiento al Socialismo represents a serious development in the political organisation of the movement, there is another potential front opening up alongside Venezuela.

Across the continent the left is re-accumulating forces and re-appraising its political perspectives. In many of the rural (peasant and landless) organisations and in the trade union movement also there are left currents coming to the fore. Left organisations are revisiting old debates but in the context of stepping out of the long-term retreat and tackling the challenges of real potential advances. Once again the questions of state and power are on the agenda. The fear of making a revolution “post-Cold War” is finally beginning to be broken.

Notes

1. The governments and business leaders of the US and Latin America have been promoting since 1994 the creation of what would be the biggest commercial bloc in the world, the Area de Libre Comercio de las Americas (ALCA). The aim is essentially to impose further and more direct US control over the Third World economies of the continent.

2. Chavez: “Con Golpistas no se negocia, se les derrota”, Danil Moser. www.rebelion.org January 19, 2003.

3. La Izquierda Contraataca, Conflicto de clases en America Latina en la era del neoliberalismo. James Petras. Westview Press 2000.
Appendices
Interview with Hugo Chavez: “Bolívar’s image is worn on the chests of young people”

Stephen O’Brien interviewed him at the São Paulo Forum in El Salvador in July 1996 for the CISLAC magazine Venceremos. The following is an abridged version of the interview.

The Bolivarian Movement was born in the barracks some 15 years ago when a group of soldiers came to the conclusion that the enemy was not communism but imperialism. For many years we worked carefully and gradually to develop a nationalist, patriotic movement with one hand in the barracks and another on the street. We developed a Bolivarian conception of revolution, which understands that we face a different empire to that confronted by [the leader of the movement for independence from Spain, General Símon] Bolívar. Bolívar, however, did foresee that North America was destined to plague us in the name of liberty. We also found inspiration in the ideas of one of his generals, Símon Rodríguez who said that it is necessary to take up not just the anti-colonial struggle but to make a revolution which tackles all the political, economic, moral, ethical and cultural questions of society.

Our revolt of February 4 1992, in which over 300 young officers and 10,000 soldiers rose up, was unsuccessful because, despite our close links with the street, the people weren’t sufficiently prepared to be able to back us up. Nevertheless, we have continued to build a growing movement in strategic alliance with the residents of the poor suburbs and the universities. As we have neither huge finances nor media outlets, we spread the word face to face. In this way we find that we get to know the concerns of the people. We identify two fundamental problems facing Venezuela - poverty and national independence.

We pose the questions of independence and sovereignty by calling for a new continent-wide independence movement. The current political model is mortally wounded and no viable alternative can exist without breaking the bourgeois, neoliberal system that has operated in Venezuela since 1945. In our model of democracy, the people, civil society, are protagonists who participate in making political, even military, decisions. There are no half-measures on questions of sovereignty. There has to be direct democracy, people’s government with popular assemblies and congresses where the people retain the right to remove, nominate, sanction, and recall their elected delegates and representatives.

As well as political democracy there has to be economic democracy. If an elite owns and controls big business such as oil and the mines there can be no real democracy nor social equality. Control over the productive apparatus of society has to be distributed. This can take forms such as community ownership, self-managed enterprises and cooperatives. We call for a people’s revolutionary constituent assembly to help reconstruct from below the republic, the state and the nation of Venezuela.

As well as alliances with left and revolutionary forces, our strategy supports the idea of a people’s civic-military movement which involves the democratisation of military power. We can’t continue to tolerate the elite using the army against the people. We want to unite the people and army (like in Cuba where they have the concept of the people in arms) to create a civic-military alliance. This concept of people-army unity has to be part of a new continental alliance of defense and security and independence.

We know many currents within the defense forces of the continent who, while not necessarily revolutionary, are at least nationalist. There is one question which unites military professionals from Mexico to Argentina, as reactionary as they may be. Every military graduate who loves their profession opposes the further reduction, let alone elimination of their national army. The United States would like to see all of our armies reduced to instruments solely to combat drug trafficking or, as has happened in Panama, converted into a mere police force.

It will be a challenge to create this continental military alliance and to start interchanges of technology and experiences at different levels of the military hierarchy. In Panama, for example, we know young army personnel, especially those who are now police officers, who are inspired by General Omar Torrijos. [Torrijos negotiated the treaty which binds the United States to return the Panama Canal.] They still consider themselves soldiers and are willing to fight for the reinstallation of Panama’s own defense force.

Recently, some retired Colonels met with us and questioned the purpose of the anti-guerrilla war, which they had fought some 30 years ago in Venezuela. “Who had been right”, they asked, “those who fought for the so-called democratic governments or the guerrillas who went to the mountains and raised the banner of communism?”

We want to establish a confederation of Latin American states for the new century. We want to create strong poles of development by joining the Caribbean basin though railways and linking them with the great rivers such as the Orinoco, the Amazon and the Plata. These are the arteries of our continent. We have resources of energy, gold, silver, petroleum and steel. If we use national capital and process them here in Latin America we can sow the seeds of a new continent and a new development. Europe is moving towards unity. We need to at least develop regional blocks, such as between Brazil and Venezuela.

There has been a resurgence of collective sentiments in Venezuela. The people are awakening and are in movement around a common project. Despite repression, people such as pensioners, school children and even the army have been prepared to go out of their houses into the street and not return until they have won what they are protesting for. Sím6n Rodríguez said that material force is in the masses. Moral force is with us. Fidel has said to us, "There you call the struggle Bolivarianism, here we call it socialism”. He also said something, which I never thought that I would hear from his lips, "If you called your movement Christianity I would even be in agreement”. We have taken up Bolívar’s anti-imperialist struggle. In the barracks if a reactionary officer hears a soldier mention Bolívar the word is put about: "Watch that soldier who has been talking about Bolívar!" Just the name Bolívar scares them.

Our movement is gaining strength and very soon the world will know about the Venezuelan people. In Washington nobody mentions George Washington, in France no one talks of Napoleon, but in Venezuela the image of Bolívar is painted on the walls and his image is worn on the T-shirts on the chests of young people.

[Translation by Stephen O’Brien.]
Bitter Lessons of Chile

This is an article by Jorge Jorquera written for Green Left Weekly in 1995. http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/1995/202/202p15.htm

Days after the bombing of the presidential house La Moneda, on September 11 1973, we still waited for parents and family to return. Tens of thousands of workers had remained in their factories to defend the Salvador Allende government. We spent every night burning documents and burying what weapons we had left. The dream that millions of Chilean people buried during those nights was of the socialist future they thought they had begun to build three years earlier with the election of the Unidad Popular.

The UP was formed in 1969, consisting of Allende's Socialist Party, the Communist Party, Radical Party, Social Democrats, Independent Popular Action, Movement of Popular Unitary Action (MAPU) and the Christian Left.

The UP promised radical social reform. Popular support for it grew rapidly; 15,000 election committees were formed for the 1970 elections. The US responded with massive funds for the right-wing parties. US President Nixon saw the writing on the wall: "We cannot stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people".

The UP won the presidency with 36.3% to the National Party's 35%, a narrow but not unusual margin in Chilean elections. Even before Allende was sworn in a leading constitutionalist, General Schneider, was murdered by the right, sending clear signals that the bourgeoisie would preserve its rule by any means necessary.

Allende in government

Allende and the CP believed that a gradual transition to socialism was a strategic possibility. In fact, the UP reforms only opened a revolutionary process - pitting the working class against the capitalists, pushing the middle classes to take sides and obliging both left and right to pose strategies to resolve the crisis fundamentally.

Within the first year of government, the UP nationalised copper, nitrate, iron and coal, as well as many banks and textile mills. The UP opposed US intervention in Vietnam, stepped up relations with Soviet bloc countries and increased trade with Cuba. Other reforms included the expropriation of 3300 large land holdings, increasing the wages of lower paid workers by 66%, introducing a litre a day of free milk for 4 million children and halving unemployment.

UP popularity increased in the polls to 49%. However, tensions increased between the working class and its leadership in the UP. Workers began to sense their ability to run society, while the UP remained hamstrung by its reliance on parliamentary means.

The Christian Democrat opposition took advantage of the UP's hesitancy. While the UP was expanding the state sector of the economy, it played down the participation and mobilisation of working people, because of its concern with keeping the Christian Democrats on side (whom they saw as direct political representatives of the middle classes).

Subsequently the Christian Democrats were able to propagandise against what they called bureaucratic state ownership. In the 1971 peak trade union (CUT) elections, the Christian Democrats got one third of the votes. The majority of the UP leadership interpreted the results as a sign that the UP needed to court the Christian Democrats even more.

A growing number of militants drew a different lesson. This was evident in the 1972 workers' revolt in the Cerillo Maipu suburbs of Santiago, where 250 enterprises employing 46,000 workers made it the densest industrial concentration in the country. During the demonstrations, the Comando de Trabajadores was set up. The program of the Cerillo Maipu Comando highlighted the increasing class consciousness of a growing number of workers:

"To support the government ... in so far as they support the struggles and mobilisation of the working people ... To set up workers' control over production through delegates subject to recall ... To set up peasants' control through delegate councils, subject to recall by the base ... To create a State Construction Enterprise, under the control of a delegate council of tenants and workers ... To install a people's assembly to replace the bourgeois government ..."

By September 1972 word was already public about the right-wing "September Plan" - using foreign help and the army to overthrow the government. The Christian Democrats were making an openly subversive alliance with the extreme right, euphemistically christened the Democratic Confederation. The social base of this alliance included women from the upper classes, spoiled upper class youth and Patria y Libertad, a neo-fascist paramilitary group.

Bourgeois strike

On October 9, 1972, truck owner-drivers in the south went on strike. On October 10 a Patria y Libertad demonstration in Santiago declared it time to act. On October 11 the National Confederation of Road Hauliers declared an indefinite national strike. On October 13 shopkeepers also declared a national strike.

These sectors were reacting to increasing inflation and economic strife, and were attracted to the growing decisiveness of the reactionaries as opposed to the timidness of the government.

On October 14 all the right-wing parties issued a joint declaration supporting the strikers. Other sympathy strikes followed - the Federation of Santiago School Students, bus owners in Valparaiso and Santiago and some bank employees.

But the bourgeois strike soon met a response -- a mass mobilisation of the working class, which took it upon itself to maintain production. One after another, the industrial enterprises began moving towards real workers' control.

The Christian Democrats subsequently began to retreat from the September Plan. They realised that the strength of the working class could be overcome only by military force.

As the Christian Democrats retreated, the UP leaders interpreted this as a new opportunity to win their backing. The CP started to play up the constitutionalists in the army. On November 2 1972, the UP announced the entry into the cabinet of three generals, along with both national secretaries of the CUT. The CP paper's headline read, "A cabinet against subversion".

But by bringing the generals into cabinet and calling on the army and police to maintain social order, the UP leadership (the CP and the right wings of the Socialist Party and MAPU) contained the impetus of the mobilised working people.

During the October crisis the left of the UP and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) conducted campaigns for "power to the people". These alliances continued beyond October. Sections of the left were coming to the understanding that a revolutionary rupture with the bourgeois state would be necessary; the working class would have to be organised and prepared for the decisive battles.

In December 1972, MAPU elected a new general secretary, who claimed MAPU had become a Marxist party. Its congress sketched out a new political line: "The Chilean revolution has an uninterrupted socialist character; democratic tasks and socialist tasks are increasingly bound up with each other, and become at the same time the principal tasks ..."

On the other hand, the UP leadership responded with the Millas Plan. Orlando Millas, the CP minister of the economy, prepared a submission questioning the status of 123 industrial enterprises, most of which had been taken over by their workers during October. The UP was suspected of preparing to give these factories back to their bosses.

Opposed by the Socialist Party, MIR, MAPU, Christian Left and even many CP militants, the government had to back down on the Millas Plan. Under growing mass pressure, the UP went to the March 1973 provincial elections with a more radical program. As a result, the UP got an unexpectedly high vote of 44%.

As the intentions of the bourgeoisie became increasingly open, the cordones industriales and the comandos comunales (squatters, peasants and workers' community defence organisations) initiated plans for a meeting of all cordones and comandos in Santiago province. The president of the Cordon Cerillos expressed the sentiment growing among the politically advanced sections of the working class:

"The cordones are nuclei of popular power and must be developed because the government is locked into the framework of bourgeois institutions, which prevent it from thoroughly confronting the bourgeoisie."

The coup

On June 29 came the first attempted coup. It involved only 150 soldiers and was obviously only a trial run.

By this stage, however, the army was in full preparation for the decisive coup. Using the arms control law passed by the right-dominated Congress in October 1972, the army had already begun mass raids for guns in workplaces and homes.

On September 11, in the early morning hours, the navy seized the port of Valparaiso. At noon the campus of the State Technical University (a centre of left students) was attacked by jet fighters, then by troops using mortars and machine guns. Within an hour, 700 students were dead.

Factories were attacked systematically, but many workers managed to defend their factories for hours. An Italian newspaper described the savage onslaught by the army on one of the major plants in the industrial suburbs of Santiago: "Although it was attacked by heavy artillery and bombed from the air, the workers held out for five days. When the troops finally entered the shops, bodies were lying all over the floor. Then there was a hand to hand struggle inside, a last desperate attempt to hold the factory."

All socialist centres and offices were immediately attacked. Troops machine-gunned the entire staff of the MIR paper Punto Final in their offices. In all some 25,000 people were killed in the first few days.

Many things are different today, but the tragic lessons of the Chilean coup -- the failure of the gradualist parliamentary strategy -- remain.